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                <p>Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer just a nice-to-have. It&#8217;s now critical to maintain a strong, competitive advantage. Whether you’re in the Life Sciences, Real Estate, Financial Services, Higher Education, Manufacturing, or Global Retail sectors, AI can be a game-changer. But with so much potential out there, it can be challenging to know where or how to begin. Should you start with a massive, customer-facing product? Create your own internal solution to streamline ops? Dabble in an out-of-the-box solution? The answer is a question–what are your goals?<br />
</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">But first, let&#8217;s pause for some mind-blowing facts that will help you contextualize AI&#8217;s potential impact on your business:   <br />
</h3>
<ul>
<li>By deploying AI in customer service, businesses can increase customer satisfaction by 30% through faster and more accurate responses.<sup><a href="#fn1" id="ref1">1</a></sup></li>
<li>AI can automate up to 45% of routine business activities, freeing up valuable time for strategic tasks.<sup><a href="#fn2" id="ref2">2</a></sup></li>
<li>Businesses leveraging AI for personalized marketing see a 35% increase in conversion rates.<sup><a href="#fn3" id="ref3">3</a></sup></li>
<li>Businesses that adopt AI can achieve a 20% reduction in operational costs within the first year.<sup><a href="#fn4" id="ref4">4</a></sup></li>
<li>AI-powered data analytics can improve decision-making accuracy by up to 85%.<sup><a href="#fn5" id="ref5">5</a></sup></li>
<li>AI technology can enhance supply chain efficiency by predicting demand and optimizing inventory management.<sup><a href="#fn6" id="ref6">6</a></sup></li>
</ul>
<p></br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Where to start with AI? Talk with an expert</h3>
<p>For over 14 years, Think It First has led the design and build of web and software applications for organizations looking to make their lives and their customers&#8217; lives easier. The goal has always been to create meaningful solutions with impact, but that address specific business needs with an eye towards learning and iterating upon those ideas over time. Our approach to AI is no different.</p>
<p><a rel="noopener" href="https://thinkitfirst.com/expertise/ai-consulting-and-development/" target="_blank">Think It First offers a refined and strategic approach</a> that prioritizes creating impactful, tailored solutions over merely joining the AI trend. Our process can help you discover where AI can enhance efficiency and innovation, and streamline operations. By integrating AI through a methodical approach, your business can unlock unprecedented efficiencies and create value across various domains.</p>
<p> <br />
</br></p>
<h2 style="text-align:center"; "color: #f16251;">Some practical applications and ideas that span industry verticals: </h2>
<p></br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Enhance Customer Experiences with AI-Powered Solutions </h3>
<p>AI can redefine your customer interactions, making service faster, more personalized, and the whole exchange highly efficient. Through AI-powered chatbots and website assistants, your business can offer instant customer support, addressing queries and resolving issues around the clock. Additionally, AI systems can analyze customer data to offer personalized recommendations, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty. AI applications enhance the capabilities of human workers by providing tools that increase their productivity, support decision-making, and improve output quality.</p>
<p><span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Automated Customer Support Systems</span><br />
Develop AI-powered customer support systems that can autonomously handle common customer inquiries and issues. Train the AI on systems on the organization’s proprietary data so that it can understand and respond to customer questions, process requests, and handle basic troubleshooting with the capabilities of a customer service representative.</p>
<p><span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Decision Support Systems</span><br />
Enhance strategic decision-making by presenting potential decisions and analyzing their possible outcomes. It can help workers evaluate risks, predict impacts on key performance indicators (KPIs), and simulate different conditions based on employee input.<br />
</br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Streamline Operations with Automation </h3>
<p>AI applications streamline operations by automating routine and repetitive tasks to free up human resources for more strategic or creative work. Automating these processes saves time, reduces operational costs, and improves accuracy and efficiency. From automating tedious and repetitive tasks to optimizing workflows, AI can significantly reduce the operational burden on your staff. Routine tasks such as scheduling, invoicing, and data entry can be seamlessly handled by intelligent automation tools.</p>
<p><span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Data Entry Automation</span><br />
Automatically input, verify, and manage data across various systems, reducing human error and increasing data processing speed.</p>
<p><span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Summarization Tools</span><br />
Summarize long documents, video call transcripts, and emails quickly, enabling faster decision-making and keeping essential communications efficient.<br />
</br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Leverage Predictive Analytics for Strategic Planning </h3>
<p>One of AI’s game-changing capabilities is predictive analytics, which allows businesses to anticipate trends and make informed decisions. By analyzing historical data, AI algorithms can predict market trends, customer behaviors, and even identify potential risks. This empowers businesses to stay ahead of the competition and allocate resources more effectively. </p>
<p><span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Data Analysis</span><br />
Sift through large datasets to find trends, predict the future, and get useful insights. By automating complex data analysis, you can make faster decisions, find ways to improve, and better understand the market and customer needs.<br />
</br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Boost Marketing Efforts with AI-Driven Insights </h3>
<p>In digital marketing, AI can be a potent ally. With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data, AI can provide insights into customer preferences, optimal content strategies, and effective campaign timing. Personalized content recommendations and predictive lead scoring can vastly improve your marketing ROI, driving higher engagement and conversions. </p>
<p><span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Content Generation</span><br />
Create high-quality, engaging content using specific keywords, themes, or data. These kinds of AI tools adapt and learn different tones and styles to match brand guidelines and audience needs, ensuring consistent communication through all of your materials.<br />
</br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Optimize Product Development and Quality Assurance </h2>
<p>AI can revolutionize product development by aiding in rapid prototyping and design optimization. For tech-driven industries, AI-enhanced coding tools reduce the time needed for testing and debugging, boosting development efficiency. This ensures faster time-to-market while maintaining high product quality. </p>
<p>Partnering with AI development experts can ensure that these advanced technologies are seamlessly integrated into your existing systems, tailoring solutions to meet your specific business needs and objectives. By embracing AI, your business can not only thrive but also set new industry benchmarks.</p>
<p></br></p>
<h1 style="text-align: center; color: #b9cc65;">&#8220;The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don&#8217;t really even notice it, so it&#8217;s part of everyday life.&#8221;</h1>
<p style="text-align: center;">&#8211; Bill Gates</p>
<p></br></p>
<h2 style="text-align:center"; "color: #f16251;">Ready to transform your business with AI? Imagine integrating cutting-edge technology to make processes effortless and virtually invisible, just as Bill Gates envisioned.</h2>
<p></br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Future-Proof Your Business with AI Consulting and Development </h3>
<p>AI is more than just a trend; it&#8217;s the future. From predictive analytics to automated customer service, AI can offer a wealth of benefits tailored to your unique business needs. For businesses eager to see how AI can revolutionize their operations, we offer a straightforward path to success anchored in a thoughtful, iterative process designed to empower businesses by guiding them through the complexities of AI integration with insight and technical expertise.</p>
<p></br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Start Here</h3>
<p>Think It First&#8217;s <a rel="noopener" href="https://thinkitfirst.com/expertise/ai-consulting-and-development/" target="_blank">AI project portfolio</a> highlights our ability to deliver transformative solutions across a variety of industries. Our projects demonstrate a deep understanding of AI’s capabilities and the strategic vision to use them effectively. </p>
<ul>
<li>Product selection guides that enhance customer service</li>
<li>Unique customer lead-gen journeys tailored to your Sales process</li>
<li>Tailored GPT-based chatbots</li>
<li>Custom AI Navigator assistants that leverage proprietary data</li>
<li>Custom AI analytics dashboards</li>
<li>Custom administrative dashboards for enhanced control</li>
</ul>
<p></br></p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251;">Here for all the  questions:</h3>
<ul>
<li>How can AI strategy help in gaining a competitive edge?</li>
<li>How can AI consulting improve my business operations?</li>
<li>What are the key benefits of implementing an AI strategy in my business?</li>
<li>How can AI-driven analytics improve customer satisfaction?</li>
<li>How can AI solutions be customized for small and medium-sized enterprises?</li>
<li>What are the potential cost savings from deploying AI in business operations?</li>
</ul>
<p></br></p>
<hr/>
<p></br><br />
<sup>Sources for the claims made above:</sup><br />
<br />
<sup id="fn1">1. [The 30% increase in customer satisfaction through AI deployment in customer service can be traced back to numerous industry case studies and reports showing significant improvements in customer response times and accuracy.]<a href="#ref1" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩</a></sup><br />
<br />
<sup id="fn2">2. [Research from global consultancy firms indicates that automation through AI can reduce routine business activity workload by up to 45%, enabling employees to focus on more strategic initiatives. Refer to McKinsey&#8217;s reports on workplace automation for further insights.]<a href="#ref2" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩</a></sup><br />
<br />
<sup id="fn3">3. [Case studies and reports from marketing analysts show that businesses using AI for personalized marketing campaigns experience a 35% increase in conversion rates. Studies by Gartner have detailed this trend extensively.]<a href="#ref3" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.">↩</a></sup><br />
<br />
<sup id="fn4">4. [The 20% reduction in operational costs within the first year of AI adoption is supported by financial analyses from companies such as Deloitte and PwC, which have documented initial cost savings through AI integration.]<a href="#ref4" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.">↩</a></sup><br />
<br />
<sup id="fn5">5. [Data from AI-powered analytics tools have shown to enhance decision-making accuracy by up to 85% as seen in various case studies published by Microsoft and IBM.]<a href="#ref5" title="Jump back to footnote 5 in the text.">↩</a></sup><br />
<br />
<sup id="fn6">6. [According to studies by supply chain experts and consultancies, AI technologies can significantly optimize supply chain operations by predicting demand and effectively managing inventory levels.]<a href="#ref6" title="Jump back to footnote 6 in the text.">↩</a></sup></p>
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Ready to Begin Your AI Journey? Think. It. First.

Design

10 Features of a User-Centric Website Design 

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                <p>Having a good-looking website is only the beginning. To truly succeed, your website must not only have visual appeal but also rank well in search engine results. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play.<br />
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SEO is not a standalone process; it should be an integral part of your web design strategy. In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the role of SEO in web design and explore how it can help your website gain visibility, attract organic traffic, and ultimately achieve your business goals.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #b9cc65;">Understanding the Basics of SEO<br />
</h2>
<p>Before we dive into the intricacies of SEO in web design, it&#8217;s essential to understand the fundamental concepts of SEO.</p>
<p>Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and phrases. The primary goal of SEO is to improve your website&#8217;s visibility and attract organic (non-paid) traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.</p>
<p>SEO involves various strategies and techniques, including:</p>
<p>Keyword Research: Identifying the keywords and phrases your target audience uses when searching for products, services, or information related to your business.</p>
<p>On-Page SEO: Optimizing individual web pages to improve their ranking. This includes optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and content.</p>
<p>Off-Page SEO: Building external links (backlinks) to your website from other reputable sources, which helps improve your website&#8217;s authority and credibility.</p>
<p>Technical SEO: Ensuring that your website is technically sound and search engine-friendly. This includes improving site speed, mobile-friendliness, and fixing crawl errors.</p>
<p>Content Creation: Creating high-quality, valuable content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience.</p>
<p>Now that we have a basic understanding of SEO, let&#8217;s explore how it intertwines with web design.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #5eafbf;">SEO and Web Design: A Symbiotic Relationship</h2>
<p>Web design and SEO are not isolated entities but rather interdependent components that work together to create a successful online presence. Here&#8217;s how they complement each other:</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">1. Mobile-Friendly Design</h3>
<p>In the mobile-first era, having a mobile-friendly design is critical for SEO success. Google and other search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their rankings. If your website is not optimized for mobile devices, it may rank lower in mobile search results, potentially resulting in a loss of organic traffic.</p>
<p>Responsive web design is a crucial aspect of mobile-friendliness. It ensures that your website&#8217;s layout and content adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes and devices. By incorporating responsive design principles into your website, you not only provide a better user experience but also improve your chances of ranking higher in mobile search results.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">2. Page Speed Optimization</h3>
<p>Page speed is another crucial factor that influences both user experience and SEO. Slow-loading websites can lead to higher bounce rates, where visitors quickly leave your site. This negatively affects user engagement and may lead to lower search engine rankings.</p>
<p>When designing your website, consider implementing various techniques to optimize page speed:</p>
<p>Image Compression: Compress and optimize images to reduce their file size without sacrificing quality.</p>
<p>Browser Caching: Use browser caching to store website assets on a user&#8217;s device, reducing the need to download them on subsequent visits.</p>
<p>Minimize HTTP Requests: Reduce the number of HTTP requests by combining CSS and JavaScript files.</p>
<p>Content Delivery Network (CDN): Use a CDN to distribute website assets across multiple servers globally, improving loading times.</p>
<p>By prioritizing page speed in your web design, you enhance the user experience and improve your website&#8217;s SEO performance.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">3. SEO-Friendly URL Structure</h3>
<p>The URL structure of your website plays a role in both user experience and SEO. A clear and logical URL structure makes it easier for users to understand the hierarchy of your website&#8217;s content and navigate to specific pages. Moreover, search engines prefer clean and descriptive URLs, as they provide valuable information about the page&#8217;s topic.</p>
<p>When designing your website, consider the following best practices for URL structure:</p>
<p>Use descriptive keywords in your URLs that reflect the content of each page.<br />
Use hyphens to separate words in URLs (e.g., www.example.com/seo-friendly-url).<br />
Avoid using long, convoluted URLs with unnecessary parameters and numbers.<br />
Keep URLs concise and meaningful.</p>
<p>A well-structured URL not only benefits user navigation but also helps search engines understand and rank your content more effectively.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">4. Optimized Content Layout<br />
</h3>
<p>Content is a cornerstone of both web design and SEO. When designing your website, pay close attention to how content is presented and organized. A well-structured content layout not only enhances user readability but also helps search engines index and understand your content.</p>
<p>Consider these aspects of content layout:</p>
<p>Headings and Subheadings: Use a hierarchical structure with clear headings and subheadings to break up content and improve readability.</p>
<p>Internal Linking: Incorporate internal links to connect related content within your website. This helps both users and search engines discover and navigate your site&#8217;s content.</p>
<p>Image Alt Text: Include descriptive alt text for images to provide context for users with visual impairments and improve image search optimization.</p>
<p>Keyword Placement: Strategically place relevant keywords within your content, but avoid keyword stuffing, which can result in penalties from search engines.</p>
<p>By optimizing your content layout for both users and search engines, you can create a seamless and effective user experience while improving your website&#8217;s SEO.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">5. User Experience and Engagement</h3>
<p>User experience (UX) is a critical factor in web design, and it directly impacts SEO. Google and other search engines consider user signals, such as bounce rate, time on site, and click-through rate, when determining search rankings. A positive user experience leads to increased engagement, which can, in turn, boost your website&#8217;s SEO performance.</p>
<p>To enhance user experience through web design:</p>
<p>Prioritize User-Friendly Navigation: Ensure that your website&#8217;s navigation is intuitive and easy to use, allowing visitors to find the information they need effortlessly.</p>
<p>Create Engaging and Valuable Content: High-quality, relevant content keeps users on your site longer and encourages them to explore further.</p>
<p>Implement Clear Call-to-Action (CTA) Buttons: Use strategically placed CTA buttons to guide users toward desired actions, such as signing up for newsletters or making a purchase.</p>
<p>Optimize Page Layout and Design: A clean, organized layout with a visually pleasing design can positively impact user engagement.</p>
<p>By designing your website with user experience in mind, you can increase user engagement, reduce bounce rates, and improve your SEO rankings over time.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">6. Schema Markup and Structured Data</h3>
<p>Schema markup is a form of structured data that provides search engines with additional information about the content on your website. It helps search engines understand the context of your content, enabling them to display rich snippets in search results.</p>
<p>Rich snippets can include star ratings, product prices, event dates, and more. These enhanced search results attract more attention and provide valuable information to users, increasing click-through rates.</p>
<p>When implementing schema markup into your web design, consider the following:</p>
<p>Use appropriate schema types to describe different types of content on your website, such as articles, reviews, products, and events.</p>
<p>Ensure that the structured data accurately represents the content on each page.</p>
<p>Test your schema markup using Google&#8217;s Structured Data Testing Tool to verify that it&#8217;s correctly implemented.</p>
<p>By incorporating schema markup into your web design, you can enhance your website&#8217;s visibility in search results and provide users with more informative and attractive listings.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">7. SEO-Friendly Images and Multimedia</h3>
<p>Images and multimedia elements are essential for a visually appealing website, but they can also impact SEO. When including images and multimedia in your web design, it&#8217;s important to optimize them for both user experience and search engine visibility.</p>
<p>Consider the following tips:</p>
<p>Image Optimization: Compress images to reduce file size while maintaining quality. Use descriptive file names and alt text for images to improve accessibility and SEO.</p>
<p>Video Optimization: Host videos on platforms like YouTube or Vimeo and embed them on your website. This not only improves page load times but also leverages the power of video SEO on those platforms.</p>
<p>Interactive Multimedia: If your website includes interactive elements, such as maps or infographics, ensure that they are mobile-friendly and accessible.</p>
<p>By optimizing images and multimedia elements in your web design, you enhance user engagement and make your content more appealing to both users and search engines.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Conclusion</h3>
<p>Web design and SEO go hand in hand. A well-designed website that incorporates SEO best practices provides a better user experience and ranks higher in search engine results, attracting more organic traffic. As you start on your site design, remember that SEO is not a one-time task; it&#8217;s an ongoing process that requires continuous optimization and adaptation to evolving search engine algorithms.</p>
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Content Strategy

The Role of SEO in Web Design: A Comprehensive Guide

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                <h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. It currently powers 40% of the internet.</h3>
<p>For the top 1000 sites on the web, the market share is even higher at 51.8%. Let&#8217;s dig into why we&#8217;re not alone in our love for this powerful, and free, open-source software:<br />
</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Exploring the User-friendly Interface of WordPress</h3>
<p>One of the key features that make WordPress a leading CMS platform is its user-friendly interface. WordPress is designed to be intuitive and easy to navigate, even for those with little to no technical experience. This means that users can easily create, edit, and manage their content without needing to understand complex coding or web design principles. From the dashboard, users have access to all the necessary features and settings with descriptive icons and text names that guide you through the process. Whether you are uploading a new blog post, adding a new product listing, or rearranging the layout of your site, the intuitive design of the WordPress dashboard makes it a breeze. But, let&#8217;s delve into more of the specificWhen comparing the usability of WordPress to other Content Management Systems (CMS), one of the most notable advantages is its intuitive and user-friendly interface. WordPress is designed to be easy to navigate, even for those with little to no technical expertise. This means that users can focus on creating and managing content, rather than grappling with complex technical issues.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #b9cc65;">&#8220;The best thing about WordPress is its ease of use, it&#8217;s open-source and free.&#8221;</h2>
<p style="text-align: center;">&#8211; Syed Balkhi</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Creating and Editing Content with Ease</h3>
<p>With WordPress, creating and editing content is easy-breezy. The platform&#8217;s built-in editor, the Gutenberg Editor, makes content creation remarkably seamless. It utilizes blocks to add and arrange content components with ease, enhancing your ability to create visually compelling and readable posts. Whether you&#8217;re crafting a longform blog post or a quick update to your business’s services page, Gutenberg empowers you with a multitude of options. Further enhancing your digital narrative, you can embed pictures, videos, and even social media posts within your content. With just a few clicks, you can seamlessly integrate engaging elements to level up your storytelling and keep your readers hooked. And, let&#8217;s not overlook the invaluable advantages of WordPress&#8217;s autosave and versioning features. Missteps and unintended changes are no longer catastrophic &#8211; you can effortlessly revert to prior versions of your content or recover lost work.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Streamlining Your Workflow with Convenient Pagination</h3>
<p>In the world of digital content, &#8216;user experience&#8217; is a term of utmost significance. WordPress takes it seriously and, to ensure an appealing scrolling experience for your readers, introduces the convenient concept of pagination. By breaking up longer content into more manageable and digestible &#8216;pages&#8217;, this feature effortlessly enhances the user experience, encouraging your audience to stay longer on your site.<br />
<a href="https://wordpress.org/40-percent-of-web/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Over 40% of all websites on the internet are built on WordPress</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Fostering Accessibility with WordPress</h3>
<p>Website accessibility is critical in the digital age, and WordPress ensures your content is approachable for people of all abilities. With built-in tools and plugins, adjusting text sizes, color contrasts, and enabling screen-reader accessibility becomes easy as pie. This feature reaffirms WordPress&#8217;s commitment to inclusivity and its dedication to making online experiences better for all users.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">The Power of Permalinks</h3>
<p>With WordPress, link management is a breeze. The platform offers users the capability to customize permalinks, allowing more flexibility in creating SEO-friendly URLs. Not only does this contribute to better search engine rankings, it also leads to increased click-through rates by providing users with a glimpse of what to expect from the linked page.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Theme and Plugin Management</h3>
<p>Another notable feature in WordPress is the ability to manage your themes and plugins directly from the dashboard. WordPress houses an extensive collection of free and premium themes and plugins that can significantly extend your site&#8217;s functionality and appearance. You can install, activate, or deactivate them with the click of a button. No need for any technical knowledge – it’s as simple as ABC.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Optimizing Your Site with WordPress SEO</h3>
<p>WordPress isn’t just about posting content; it also helps you optimize it for search engines. WordPress comes equipped with several SEO-friendly features that simplify the process of optimizing your content for enhanced visibility in search engine rankings. Combined with powerful SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO, you&#8217;ve got a competitive edge to soar high in SERPs. Of course, the strength of WordPress extends beyond its SEO features.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Building a Community with Comments</h3>
<p>WordPress promotes interaction and engagement on your site through its built-in commenting system. This feature not only makes it easy for users to voice their thoughts and opinions but also convenes conversations that can truly foster a community around your content. With the available comment moderation tools, WordPress ensures you have full control over the quality and appropriateness of the dialogues on your site.</p>
<blockquote><p>The reason we chose WordPress is because of its vibrant community and the staff behind WordPress.com. They have been incredibly responsive and supportive.<br />
&#8211; Chris Coyier</p></blockquote>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Staying Updated with Automatic Upgrades</h3>
<p>WordPress takes out the rigors associated with CMS updates by offering automatic upgrades. This keeps your website running on the most recent, secure version of WordPress that is capable of delivering superior performance. Automatic upgrades are a worry-free way ensuring both the security and functionality of your site are always optimal.<br />
<a href="https://wordpress.com/support/general-settings/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WordPress is available in over 100 languages, making it globally accessible<br />
</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Benefiting from Multilingual Support</h3>
<p>Targeting a global audience? WordPress has you covered with its support for over 70 languages. This feature allows you to develop a website that caters to diverse demographics and delivers a user-friendly experience no matter the region or language of your audience.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Making Most of Media Management</h3>
<p>WordPress excels in handling various media types. From uploading images, audio, video to document files, WordPress makes it easy for you to integrate them into your website. The platform’s enhanced media management capabilities allow you to effortlessly drag, drop and even edit media files directly in the WordPress interface.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Optimizing Site Performance with Caching</h3>
<p>WordPress facilitates improved site performance through caching. With plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache, you can significantly speed up your website, ensuring your users enjoy faster loading times and a smoother navigation experience.<br />
<a href="https://wpengine.com/resources/value-of-wordpress-worlds-first-study-of-wordpress-economy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WordPress is the fastest growing CMS, with roughly 500+ new sites built daily in the top 10 million websites on the web</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Supercharge Your Business with WordPress Scalability</h3>
<p>Another major advantage of WordPress is its scalability. Whether you&#8217;re running a small personal blog or a large corporate website, WordPress can handle it. The platform is designed to grow with your needs, allowing you to add more pages and functionalities as your site expands. This makes it a great choice for businesses of all sizes. WordPress&#8217; scalability also enables you to manage high levels of traffic effortlessly. As your audience grows, WordPress has the capacity to maintain optimal site performance, thereby ensuring that the user experience remains smooth, fast, and convenient for every visitor.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #9d6ac7;">WordPress is used by 64.1% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 40.9% of all websites.</h2>
<p style="text-align: center;">&#8211; W3Techs</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Scalability Coupled with High Performance</h3>
<p>If you&#8217;re planning to run an eCommerce store, you&#8217;ll be happy to know that the scalability of WordPress extends to this space as well. WordPress offers a number of powerful eCommerce plugins such as WooCommerce, which can handle an extensive product catalog and encompass a multitude of eCommerce functionalities. This enables you to scale your online store with ease, ensuring continued growth and success.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Gearing up for Future Growth</h3>
<p>The beauty of WordPress is that it&#8217;s not just about serving your current needs, but also about anticipating and preparing for future growth. So, as you continue to evolve, rest assured that WordPress will provide a stable, scalable platform for your internet presence.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Security Features: A Closer Look at WordPress CMS</h3>
<p>WordPress is also a highly secure platform. It is regularly updated to address any potential security threats, and there are numerous plugins available that can further enhance your site&#8217;s security. This gives users peace of mind knowing that their site is protected.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Wrapping Up</h3>
<p>To summarize, WordPress offers excellent user-friendliness, advanced content management tools, extensive customization options, and solid SEO features. All of these intricacies come together to form an interactive and efficient platform that scales with your needs, whether you&#8217;re a newbie blogger or a large-scale business. At Think it First we have extensive experience with WordPress, leveraging WordPress, consulting on WordPress, and implementing WordPress across various organizations.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>About the author:</em></p>
<p>Joe Lashinger is the co-founder and managing partner at Think It First. Think It First is a digital agency in suburban Philadelphia that provides services such as digital strategy, web design, web development, custom WordPress design, and more to their customers. As a business leader, Joe really enjoys helping other business leaders and owners solve complex problems and developing comprehensive strategies to grow their brand.</p>
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We’ve been building on WordPress since 2003, the year it was released. Here’s why we, and most of the world, loves it.

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                <h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Here’s why most wireframing sucks, and how we make it better</h3>
<p>Wireframing is a crucial part of the <a href="/blog/trust-the-process/">digital application building process</a>. It’s how we represent the design and the relationships between different screens. The most important job a wireframe does is enable us to make important decisions related to the user experience, ultimately allowing us to craft a desired behavioral outcome from elements on the screen.</p>
<p>Most wireframing, however, sucks.<br />
</p>
<p>More often than not, a wireframe deliverable is a bunch of boxes and some squiggly lines. It&#8217;s static and unclickable, foregoing any sense of interactivity and realness. A client looks at them and thinks… Ok… these look… fine? Best case, they trust you and let you do your thing. Worst case, they start to wonder what they’re paying for.</p>
<p>Wireframes have a historical place in multi-disciplinary teams. Back in the late 90s, most graphic designers (often from the world of print media) didn’t really understand the nuances of interfaces and didn&#8217;t yet have to worry about designing for multiple screen sizes and devices. Interaction designers came from software and were used to making terminal-esque interfaces that were, uh, less than aesthetically appealing. So in order to make sure the end result was palatable, the interaction designer would make a pig, and then the graphic designer would put lipstick on it. And as designer <a href="http://eleganthack.com/words-on-wireframes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Christina Wodtke so eloquently notes</a>, wireframes like these always came with a hedge: “These don’t imply layout,” (to which she responds, “Oh, for fuck’s sake. How could they not?”).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, not much has changed. So how do we improve wireframing?</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Blueprint Prototypes &gt; Wireframing</h3>
<p>The Think it First design process is not common. We&#8217;ve thrown out the term “wireframe” in favor of “blueprinting.” Much like an architect who uses blueprints, we want to help to bring your digital home to life. When you look at blueprints, you really start to feel where the build is going. You start to experience it. Blueprints show which way doors open, where the kitchen island is… even the toilets resemble toilets. The point is, these elements are the content of the blueprint. They could appear in different shades of blue to show depth and relationship. And it&#8217;s done so that everything is structurally sound from the get-go, before anything is built. Our clients love this.</p>
<p>The more we can bring a wireframe to life, the better the sense of the final outcome our clients enjoy. In terms of a final design, a Think it First blueprint isn’t really missing much. Color, final graphics, and imagery are the only elements purposefully left out. This is done to limit distraction from aesthetics in order to focus on the real structure of the design.</p>
<p>Blueprinting also helps us figure out functionality dilemmas earlier in the process. It allows us to test on various devices sooner rather than later and make iterations and changes easier to execute.</p>
<p>Is it a legitimate time investment? Absolutely. But it’s 100 percent worth it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-926 size-full aligncenter" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/TIF_BlueprintGifV2.gif" alt="" width="620" height="1200" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Starting with Content</h3>
<p>In the wireframing world, you&#8217;ll often see squiggly lines equal future content that hasn’t been written yet. Some efforts might go as far as using lorem ipsum placeholder text. Both of those efforts are weak.</p>
<p>Conversely, we believe content comes first. You simply cannot design with a purpose without the content first. It&#8217;s the cart before the horse; the square peg in a round hole. Your site’s content is the story you’re trying to tell. Waiting until the end, hoping everything will fit in the allotted real estate doesn’t make much sense. That’s why we work with you to help write your site’s content first. Armed with it, we’re able to design and develop around your story instead of confining it.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #b9cc65;">&#8220;You simply cannot design with purpose without the content first.&#8221;</h2>
<p></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">We Now Have the Tools</h3>
<p>We’ve seen hand-drawn napkin wireframes, Google Slides wireframes and everything in between. But now, we have the tools to create what we really need to create. We believe that prototyping is the future and powerful design products like Adobe XD, InVision and Figma get us there. By being able to rapidly prototype in conjunction with the design we get a feel for the final product faster while weeding out UX obstacles. With the right tools, we avoid developing unnecessary features, remove technical roadblocks, improve usability, increase the likelihood of user acceptance, and coordinate better with what matters most: your business goals.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">It All Adds Up to Value</h3>
<p>By shifting our mindset from wireframing to blueprinting and by starting with content first, we’re able to deliver value at a stage that typically struggles to do so. This value evidences itself to you, the client, as less future iterations (aka, time and money saved), fewer functionality mistakes (an end-product that feels and works great) and a better sense of the final outcome sooner in the process (you guessed it, time and money saved).</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Because No One Wants Another Self-Aggrandizing Newsletter in Their Inbox</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Over the years, we’ve amassed quite a universe of contacts. Clients past and present. Vendors. Partners. Prospects that didn’t sign that we’re still close with. Employees that moved on to other cool things.

Recently, we decided that we wanted to do something with that universe. That naturally led us to think “newsletter!” We thought about rounding up our most recent blog posts, showcasing our latest projects, and curating a bunch of interesting content from around the web.

But then we thought otherwise.
</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">It’s Time to Stop Designing for “The Fold”</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Back when newspapers reigned supreme, there was a layout concept that publishers adhered to called “the fold.” The idea was to put the most important headlines and stories at the top of the front page, quite literally above where the paper folded, in order to attract buyers. By and large, it worked.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">What is a Design System and Why Should You Care?</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Underneath that delightful, satisfying user experience is a design system, a collection of visual and technical definitions that rule a product. Here&#8217;s why business leaders need to pay attention to them.</p>
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Traditional Wireframing Sucks

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                <p>This week marks the beginning of our first foray into summer hours. For the next three months, we will shift to a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/four-day-work-week-uk-trial-six-months/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">four-day work week</a>, giving everyone on the team Fridays off.<br />
</p>
<p>As a distributed team, our culture is built on accountability, transparency and communication. Those characteristics are what will make this work and we’re excited to build on our commitment to a healthy work-life balance.</p>
<p>At the same time, we fully understand that shifting to a four-day work week requires protocols, particularly as it relates to our clients. We know that things will come up on Fridays. We know we’ll have emergencies that can’t wait until Monday, or even Saturday. It’s just the nature of our business.</p>
<p>We’ve created automated systems that will notify senior leadership of inbound client communication that requires immediate attention. We’ve also put together an on-call schedule where a TIF team member will “staff the desk” on a rotating schedule. And while we fully encourage folks to take advantage of the three-day weekends, the general rule is simple: keep your phone on.</p>
<p>So that’s what’s up. We’ll keep you posted on how it goes!</p>
<p>Thinking about trying a four-day work week yourself? <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90754768/yet-to-try-a-4-day-week-heres-how-to-do-it-productively" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fast Company has a good primer</a>.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Because No One Wants Another Self-Aggrandizing Newsletter in Their Inbox</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Over the years, we’ve amassed quite a universe of contacts. Clients past and present. Vendors. Partners. Prospects that didn’t sign that we’re still close with. Employees that moved on to other cool things.

Recently, we decided that we wanted to do something with that universe. That naturally led us to think “newsletter!” We thought about rounding up our most recent blog posts, showcasing our latest projects, and curating a bunch of interesting content from around the web.

But then we thought otherwise.
</p>
                    </div>
                </div>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Humblebrag Time: Think It First Named a Clutch 1000 Firm</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Yeah, we win awards, too. But we&#8217;re not going to brag about it. Oh wait&#8230;</p>
                    </div>
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                <a href="/blog/humblebrag-time-think-it-first-named-a-clutch-1000-firm/" class="stretched-link"></a>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have) – Part I</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">We&#8217;ve been asked a lot of questions over the years. Part I of this series aims to answer some of the questions we get asked time and time again.</p>
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                <a href="/blog/questions-we-regularly-get-and-you-likely-have-part-i/" class="stretched-link"></a>
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Culture

Announcing Think It First Summer Hours

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                <p>I love email. (Don&#8217;t @ me. I&#8217;m not interested in any &#8220;But I get 536 emails a day!&#8221; sentiment. Congrats. You&#8217;re a big deal. Or you&#8217;re a journalist that gets a firehose of lousy pitches every. Damn. Day. You, I feel for.)</p>
<p>What I love about email is the ability it affords you to orchestrate asynchronous discussion. You can set a stage and guide your audience to where you ultimately want them to arrive. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.</p>
<p>Email is the perfect blend of art and science. It&#8217;s a skill honed over time. The earlier you treat it as such, the better off you&#8217;ll be in the long run.</p>
<p>So here are some tips to getting more out of email.<br />
</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Write Like You Speak</h3>
<p>Would you say the following out loud to a colleague?</p>
<p>&#8220;Dear Brad, In an attempt to keep the ball rolling with this worthy initiative, I seek your expert assessment with regards to the designs. Best Regards, Dave.&#8221;</p>
<p>Of course you wouldn&#8217;t. So why would you email it when, &#8220;What do you think of the designs, Brad?&#8221; is more than sufficient?</p>
<p>Lose the jargon. Lose the rigidity. <del>Say what you mean as succinctly as possible</del>. Succinctly say what you mean.</p>
<p>Related, a <a href="https://spinsucks.com/community/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Spin Sucks</a> friend of mine, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-loizeaux" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jessica Loizeaux</a>, relayed this:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #b9cc65;">&#8220;I always tell my junior team members to mimic the style and preferences of the client. For example, some clients need the full back story of an ask, while others are so busy and time stressed that they just want short and to the point emails/explanations. I think this goes a long way in building positive and trusting relationships with clients.&#8221;</h2>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Put the Important Stuff Up Top</h3>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not a recipe blog where we want the life story behind the email. Just tell us the important stuff up front.&#8221; (Shout out Trust Insights co-founder Chris Penn for that gem. <a href="https://twitter.com/cspenn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You should follow Chris</a>. Smart person.)</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Avoid Ambiguity</h3>
<p>Don&#8217;t leave things up for interpretation. (You&#8217;re orchestrating, remember!) One of my biggest ambiguous irritants? &#8220;Etc.&#8221; If there&#8217;s more, say it! Don&#8217;t let your audience wonder what else you might&#8217;ve meant.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Use Gmail? Install the Undo Send Feature</h3>
<p>Just don&#8217;t let it become a crutch.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Proofread and Then Proofread Again</h3>
<p>For super important emails, I&#8217;ll read them out loud. It helps.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Write in the Active Voice</h3>
<p>You&#8217;ll save words. You&#8217;ll be more direct. (Btw, not everyone knows the difference between active and passive voice. It&#8217;s basically this: &#8220;I ate a whole rack of ribs.&#8221; vs. &#8220;A whole rack of ribs was eaten by me.&#8221; <a href="https://www.grammarly.com/blog/active-vs-passive-voice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Grammarly&#8217;s got a good summary</a>.)</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">If There&#8217;s Something You Can Do to Make Your Recipient&#8217;s Life Easier, Do It</h3>
<p>Scheduling a meeting via email? Offer your team&#8217;s availability for your recipient to match against instead of asking for their availability which you&#8217;ll inevitably have a conflict with and hooray you&#8217;re back to square one.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Utilize Design Elements</h3>
<p>Bolding, bullets and varying font sizes can call attention to specific/important information.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Be Personable, But&#8230;</h3>
<p>Go easy on the small talk. This ultimately comes down to knowing your audience.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Keep Paragraphs Short</h3>
<p>A huge block of text is DOA.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Every Email is a Brand Moment</h3>
<p>We always tell clients that every piece of outward facing communication is a brand delivery vehicle. This includes email. Your voice, your style, your tone should feel on-brand. That doesn&#8217;t mean you have to weave in taglines or mission/vision/values statements. You know the gut feeling you want your audiences to have about your company. Give them the tools to get there with on-brand voice, style and tone in your emails.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Our To-Dos, Your To-Dos</h3>
<p>Coming out of a call or meeting, a recap email is pretty standard—and it&#8217;s a great opportunity to be super clear about who&#8217;s doing what going forward. So, uh, be super clear about who&#8217;s doing what going forward.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="color: #f16251; text-align: left;">Instill a Sense of Confidence</h3>
<p>Because email is asynchronous, it gives the recipient time to think. It gives them time to form opinions, particularly as it relates to the business relationship. In our case, clients hire us to do what they can&#8217;t. We want them to be 100 percent confident in their decision to work with us so we make a concerted effort to eliminate language in our emails that can make them think otherwise. I&#8217;m talking about casual, open-ended phrases like &#8220;We&#8217;ll see what happens&#8221; or &#8220;We&#8217;ll figure it out.&#8221;</p>
<p>No!</p>
<p>Telling a client &#8220;We&#8217;ll see what happens&#8221; is uncertain at best. Worst case, you&#8217;ve planted the seed that you might not know what you&#8217;re doing. Same goes for &#8220;We&#8217;ll figure it out.&#8221; Nope. Bring a plan. Client&#8217;s not paying you to wing it.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-1588" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/mic-drop-gif-5.gif" alt="" width="600" height="500" /></p>
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                <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&#038;url=https://thinkitfirst.com&#038;title=&#038;summary=I love email. (Don&#8217;t @ me. I&#8217;m not interested in any &#8220;But I get 536 emails a day!&#8221; sentiment. Congrats. You&#8217;re a big deal. Or you&#8217;re a journalist that gets a firehose of lousy pitches every. Damn. Day. You, I feel for.)
What I love about email is the ability it affords you to orchestrate asynchronous discussion. You can set a stage and guide your audience to where you ultimately want them to arrive. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.
Email is the perfect blend of art and science. It&#8217;s a skill honed over time. The earlier you treat it as such, the better off you&#8217;ll be in the long run.
So here are some tips to getting more out of email.&#038;source=https://thinkitfirst.com" class="linkedin" target="_blank"></a>
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                            <h2 class="title tif-h1 position-relative tif-mb-0">Thirsty for more?</h2>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Want to Know the Number One Reason Content Marketing Efforts Die?</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Content marketing works. It can help your business generate brand awareness, scale traffic, establish authority, build trust, inform audiences, raise money, facilitate self-education&#8230; its applications are just about (but not quite) endless. But lots of content marketing efforts die. They lose steam; they go dormant. They&#8217;re abandoned. There are a number of reasons why this happens. More often than not, though, a lack of organizational commitment is what kills a content marketing strategy.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have) – Part II</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Earlier this year, we shared Part I of our “Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have)&#8221; piece. Let’s get going on Part II!</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Google Hates Slow Sites</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Google wants to present searchers with a fast internet. As such, sites that take too much time to load get penalized and slip their way down the SERPs.</p>
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Emailing with Clients: 13 Tips, Zero Tricks

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                <p>In the world of WordPress, there are two ways you can go. You can buy a theme off the shelf or you can do a custom design and build. We do the latter for our clients. Here are a few reasons why.<br />
</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Ownership and control</h3>
<p>When you buy a theme, you&#8217;re entrusting a central piece of your organization&#8217;s digital presence to an entity you do not know. Sometimes it&#8217;s a company; sometimes it&#8217;s an individual. Sometimes they&#8217;re US-based; sometimes they offshore. Think about how that can impact ongoing support and security. What if the theme maker decides to sunset the theme and no longer issue updates? What if they go out of business? What if there&#8217;s no way to talk to anyone?</p>
<p>Going the custom route though means you&#8217;re usually hiring a partner that you talk to and get to know. You&#8217;re establishing trust. You&#8217;re signing contracts and building in protections. A custom WordPress build closes gaps and reduces risk, giving you the ownership and control every business deserves.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Speed</h3>
<p>Off-the-shelf themes typically require a lot of plugins—especially if you need to develop customized functionality. Lots of plugins creates bloat. Bloat slows down sites. <a href="/blog/google-hates-slow-sites/">Google values site speed</a>.</p>
<p>With a custom build, you&#8217;re using far fewer, if any, plugins. Not only does that contribute to site speed, but it also means you&#8217;re doing less plugin updating.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Usability</h3>
<p>Off-the-shelf themes rely on ease-of-use messaging. <em>Drag and drop! Even a marketer can use it!</em> This positioning makes sense: less-technical folks are often responsible for a site once it&#8217;s built. Content updates, blog posts, landing pages. The problem, though, is that <em>so-easy-even-a-marketer-can-do-it</em> means they can do&#8230; a lot. To no fault of their own, they can break stuff. (Side note: That&#8217;s no knock on marketers. I&#8217;m one, myself.)</p>
<p>Custom builds allow access without opening the floodgates. At the beginning of each project, we establish with the client who&#8217;s going to need to do what once the site is live and we design the backend around those requirements. We make it easy for content creators to blog and update copy without exposing them at all to code.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">It&#8217;s YOUR story</h3>
<p>We believe content comes first. That content informs design. Off-the-shelf themes do the opposite. They say <em>here&#8217;s where and how you can tell your story and the parameters it more or less has to fall into</em>. We regularly tell clients that we design around your story and that means we need to craft the story first. Then we go build it from scratch, free of arbitrary limitations.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Maintenance</h3>
<p>We maintain most of the sites we make. It is far more efficient for us (and cost effective for our clients) to maintain what we designed and developed ourselves as opposed to troubleshooting someone else&#8217;s thing. Each project we ship comes with simple yet comprehensive documentation. With most themes, you&#8217;re often relying on an FAQs page, perhaps some (likely outdated) documentation and Google.</p>
<p>Are these all the reasons? No. Are the instances where a theme or a builder might make sense? Yes. What matters to us is making the right recommendations for the right reasons.</p>
<p>Working with a skilled web developer in Philadelphia ensures that your website not only meets the technical standards but also captures your brand identity. We have the knowledge and creativity to craft a website that not only looks visually appealing but also functions seamlessly, offering a top-notch user experience. Customization is key in the competitive digital landscape, and our WordPress web designers excel in creating websites that reflect the unique character and values of your business.</p>
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                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Successful website projects are a collaboration between you (the client) and the website design agency that you’re working with. In this guide, we’ve put together 5 important steps that are crucial for a winning website project. If your digital agency works in tandem with you to deliver each of these 5 important steps, you’re going to end up with a result that you can both be proud of. More importantly, it will be something that your customers will love.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Ready to Begin Your AI Journey? Think. It. First.</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">With so much AI potential out there, it can be challenging to know where or how to begin. Should you start with a massive, customer-facing product? Create your own internal solution to streamline ops? Dabble in an out-of-the-box solution? The answer is a question.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Answering the “What About SEO?” Question with… More Questions</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Related to web projects, prospective clients often ask us, “What about SEO?” Usually they are asking this question because they loosely know that a website and SEO have something to do with each other. Sometimes they’re asking it because they think that’s what they’re supposed to ask. Whatever the driver, we almost always answer that question with… More questions. </p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Want to Know the Number One Reason Content Marketing Efforts Die?</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Content marketing works. It can help your business generate brand awareness, scale traffic, establish authority, build trust, inform audiences, raise money, facilitate self-education&#8230; its applications are just about (but not quite) endless. But lots of content marketing efforts die. They lose steam; they go dormant. They&#8217;re abandoned. There are a number of reasons why this happens. More often than not, though, a lack of organizational commitment is what kills a content marketing strategy.</p>
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But Can’t I Just Use a WordPress Builder?

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                <p>Another year (almost) in the books!</p>
<p>We are truly thankful. For each other. For our great clients. For compelling, meaningful projects. For you.</p>
<p>From all of us at Think It First, happy holidays.<br /></p>
<div style="padding: 56.25% 0 0 0; position: relative;"><iframe style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/654599335?h=8c96bb846b" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
<p><script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script></p>
<p>P.S. &#8211; If you&#8217;re looking for some new-to-you holiday music, go get &#8220;<a href="https://music.apple.com/us/album/socks/1436805496" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Socks</a>&#8221; by J.D. McPherson. You can thank us later.</p>
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We are truly thankful. For each other. For our great clients. For compelling, meaningful projects. For you.
From all of us at Think It First, happy holidays.&#038;source=https://thinkitfirst.com" class="linkedin" target="_blank"></a>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Because No One Wants Another Self-Aggrandizing Newsletter in Their Inbox</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Over the years, we’ve amassed quite a universe of contacts. Clients past and present. Vendors. Partners. Prospects that didn’t sign that we’re still close with. Employees that moved on to other cool things.

Recently, we decided that we wanted to do something with that universe. That naturally led us to think “newsletter!” We thought about rounding up our most recent blog posts, showcasing our latest projects, and curating a bunch of interesting content from around the web.

But then we thought otherwise.
</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Humblebrag Time: Think It First Named a Clutch 1000 Firm</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Yeah, we win awards, too. But we&#8217;re not going to brag about it. Oh wait&#8230;</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have) – Part I</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">We&#8217;ve been asked a lot of questions over the years. Part I of this series aims to answer some of the questions we get asked time and time again.</p>
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Happy Holidays!

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                <p>Think about your favorite product or site. It’s relevant to you. It’s fast and functions as you expect. It’s easy to use.</p>
<p>That last one? The one about ease of use? Underneath that delightful, satisfying user experience is a design system, a collection of visual and technical definitions that rule a product. Within that design system exist style guides, component libraries, modules and likely much more.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Style guides</span> establish visual elements: typography, color palettes, content and imagery rules, brand patterns, logo usage, grid structures and more.</p>
<p><span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Component libraries</span> define the visual styling rules for product components that developers rely on. Think proper labeling, clear descriptions, frameworking. Buttons are a germane case study. A component library for a button would define color, shape, size, text size, padding, default state, hover state, active state, where different buttons should be used, etc.</p>
<p><span style="color: #9d6ac7;">Modules</span> are “sections” that get used throughout the product. They can consist of text, imagery, video, design elements, etc. Used repeatedly, modules create a consistent, expected experience.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Great for designers and developers… and users</h3>
<p>Design systems are critical for efficient product development. Designers and developers love them. But business teams need to appreciate them too because without design systems, users get lost; they get mad. They bail. They don’t turn into revenue.</p>
<p>Legendary usability expert, <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/people/jakob-nielsen/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jakob Nielsen</a>, defined the 10 heuristics, or “golden rules,” of user experience. Three are particularly relevant to the value design systems provide users&#8230;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Consistency and standards</h3>
<p>People use a lot of websites. Whether they know it or not (they don’t), they’re used to industry standards. When building out design systems it’s important to take into consideration these standards so you’re not asking your user to learn new ways to achieve their objectives. Example: the industry standard for the menu is at the top of the page — either a written out list or a “hamburger” style button in the top right corner. If you decide that your menu is going to be an unlabeled circle in the bottom left corner of your page, you’re making your user re-learn how to use a website.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Error prevention</h3>
<p>Through design systems, users start to recognize the actions they are supposed to take by following visual cues. When a user is confident in the actions they are taking, they are less likely to make errors on the site, resulting in less frustration and better usability. By providing the user with the visual cues and tools they need to properly navigate the site, you’re eliminating hurdles that never had to be there in the first place. For example, if all “next” buttons on a step form have been blue and in the bottom right corner, but all of a sudden on a different step the “cancel” button is blue and in the right corner, there is a higher chance the user will accidentally hit that instead of next, because they are trained to hit your blue button in the bottom right to keep moving forward.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Recognition, not recall</h3>
<p>Similar to error prevention, a user will quickly start recognizing what actions they need to take on a website based on visual cues they receive. This minimizes the need for the user to relearn an action on every single page because they’ll recognize information they’ve already seen. Ultimately, this reduces their memory load and requires minimal cognitive effort which will lead to a better user experience. Revisiting the blue “next” button, you are training the user that when they need to go to the next step in the form they go to the bottom right of the page and find the blue button.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">It’s about trust</h3>
<p>Thoughtful design systems help users gain confidence. They help them get to where they need to go with minimal friction. Businesses that invest in design systems gain a leg up on their competition—simply by making things easier.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you’re looking for a web agency in Philadelphia, Think It First has you covered. Our WordPress website design services are perfect for businesses that want to grow, and we’re excited to work with you along the way. While we offer web development in Philadelphia, we also serve businesses throughout the entire country. Reach out to our web agency in Philadelphia today to get started! </span></p>
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That last one? The one about ease of use? Underneath that delightful, satisfying user experience is a design system, a collection of visual and technical definitions that rule a product. Within that design system exist style guides, component libraries, modules and likely much more.&#038;source=https://thinkitfirst.com" class="linkedin" target="_blank"></a>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">It’s Time to Stop Designing for “The Fold”</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Back when newspapers reigned supreme, there was a layout concept that publishers adhered to called “the fold.” The idea was to put the most important headlines and stories at the top of the front page, quite literally above where the paper folded, in order to attract buyers. By and large, it worked.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Traditional Wireframing Sucks</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">More often than not, a wireframe deliverable is a bunch of boxes and some squiggly lines. It&#8217;s static and unclickable, foregoing any sense of interactivity and realness. A client looks at them and thinks… Ok… these look… fine? Best case, they trust you and let you do your thing. Worst case, they start to wonder what they’re paying for.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Want to Know the Number One Reason Content Marketing Efforts Die?</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Content marketing works. It can help your business generate brand awareness, scale traffic, establish authority, build trust, inform audiences, raise money, facilitate self-education&#8230; its applications are just about (but not quite) endless. But lots of content marketing efforts die. They lose steam; they go dormant. They&#8217;re abandoned. There are a number of reasons why this happens. More often than not, though, a lack of organizational commitment is what kills a content marketing strategy.</p>
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What is a Design System and Why Should You Care?

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                <p>We recently tackled a web refresh project that required the migration of over 4,000 pieces of content, specifically blog posts, rich in SEO value. Maintaining that SEO value was a top client priority.</p>
<p>Here’s how we went about it.<br />
</p>
<p>First, some background. The existing site was actually just a WordPress blog with no pages, built on an off-the-shelf theme. The plan for the new site was for that blog to live within a fuller, more robust site, in a custom WordPress build.</p>
<p>After we conducted our initial evaluation of the existing site and its data structure, we mapped out our options.</p>
<p>We could first try the most straightforward content migration approach: an export/import tool. This would allow us to be selective and efficient—but only if the tool could handle the volume and complexity of the legacy content. If this approach worked, we would have saved a decent amount of hours that could be applied elsewhere.</p>
<p>It didn’t.</p>
<p>The export/import tool buckled repeatedly under the sheer volume of content and 15 years worth of bloat.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251">But we had a Plan B.</h3>
<p>We did a full clone of the existing site. Then we worked with the client to understand why certain decisions were made so that we could make better ones going forward. Take categorization for example. It’s easy for a blog’s category taxonomy to spiral out of control over 15 years, resulting in near duplicates, slight yet crucial misspellings and even misapplications. By understanding the client’s rationale for past decisions, we would be able to make improvements in the cloned version of the site.</p>
<p>So that’s what we did. We cleaned up categorization. We got rid of some of the older content that was either not seeing any traffic or irrelevant to where the business wanted to go. We agreed upon a content freeze (aka, a moment in time where the client would pause publishing). But most importantly, we nailed down an overall content data structure that was primed for our new build.</p>
<p>Did we lose some things? Yes. But there were no surprises. Take, for example, featured images. For the first few years of the existing site, authors never added featured images. But given that those posts were older and saw less traffic, we made the recommendation that they should all just have the same featured image.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251">The client was fine with that.</h3>
<p>Ultimately, we launched the new site, with fully migrated (and improved) blog content, SEO intact. Speaking of SEO, the fact that we were moving from WordPress to WordPress made things a lot easier. Obviously, it’s not impossible to migrate content between two different CMS. In those instances, we typically create custom content mapping scripts that get the job done.</p>
<p>Nuts and bolts aside, our holistic approach to solving the content migration problem (and most problems) deserves some attention.</p>
<p>Philosophically, we take an agile, modular approach to development. And you can kind of think of it in “atomic” terms. We take really big challenges and break them down into their parts. Then we break those parts down into their parts. The idea is to get to the smallest, most reduced pieces and then start solving for those. As you do that, the pieces reassemble into bigger pieces, ultimately returning back to a better version of the really big thing.</p>
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                            <h2 class="title tif-h1 position-relative tif-mb-0">Also read</h2>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">It’s Time to Stop Designing for “The Fold”</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Back when newspapers reigned supreme, there was a layout concept that publishers adhered to called “the fold.” The idea was to put the most important headlines and stories at the top of the front page, quite literally above where the paper folded, in order to attract buyers. By and large, it worked.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">How to Write a Creative Brief (And Why Doing it Right Matters)</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">A creative brief is a document that details a design project. It serves as a roadmap, addressing the who, the what, the why and the when. Typically, the recipient of the project’s output will provide the raw input for the design team to synthesize into a document for review.

Simple enough, right? You’d think so, but a creative brief blends unmistakable clarity and uninterpretable detail. That’s sometimes harder to do than it sounds. </p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Trust The Process</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">This post isn’t about <s>Ben</s> <s>Harden</s> Maxey or Jo-Jo or Sam Hinkie’s 7,000-word resignation letter. It’s not about a perplexing inability to win on the road against bottom-half teams. Aside from borrowing a hashtag, this post has nothing to do with basketball.</p>
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How We Approach Content Migration from an Old Site to a New One

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                <p>Content marketing works.</p>
<p>It can help your business generate brand awareness, scale traffic, establish authority, build trust, inform audiences, raise money, facilitate self-education&#8230; its applications are just about (but not quite) endless.</p>
<p>But lots of content marketing efforts die. They lose steam; they go dormant.</p>
<p>They&#8217;re abandoned.</p>
<p>There are a number of reasons why this happens. More often than not, though, a lack of organizational commitment is what kills a content marketing strategy.<br />
</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Let&#8217;s unpack that</h3>
<p>Content marketing is usually led by&#8230; content marketers. They develop the strategy, defining audiences, objectives, KPIs, distribution frameworks and everything else that goes with standing up the machine. That is what they are good at. They&#8217;re also good at operationalizing: scheduling, editing, publishing, measuring, reporting.</p>
<p>This is their domain. This is their expertise.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #9d6ac7;">But unless they are developing a content strategy for a business that sells content strategy, they are not the subject matter experts capable of <em>developing the actual content</em></h2>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>And thats OK. In fact, it&#8217;s good. In the same way that a dentist is not the ideal candidate to blog about content marketing, a content marketer probably (hopefully?) doesn&#8217;t have a whole lot of authority on dentistry.</p>
<p>It is the content marketer&#8217;s job to get organizational buy-in on content marketing. They need to secure commitments from the subject matter experts. They need them to play an active role in supporting (not running) content marketing.</p>
<p>Without that commitment, the whole thing is DOA.</p>
<p>So how do you, content marketer, get that commitment? How do you get folks from within your organization to participate in a work stream that they are (likely) not super passionate about, nor measured against or compensated for?</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Start with the bigger picture</h3>
<p>Ask a non-marketer to blog or otherwise create something and they&#8217;ll wonder why they would ever bother to do it. It&#8217;s not pertinent to their work. It doesn&#8217;t fit into their day-to-day. <em>They&#8217;ve got better things to do</em>.</p>
<p>All valid reactions. It&#8217;s up to the content marketer to explain why the company is pursing content marketing and what the expected results are. It&#8217;s the difference between &#8220;we&#8217;d like you to write some articles for us&#8221; and &#8220;by sharing your insights and ideas with our audiences, we&#8217;ll gain mindshare with our clients&#8230;. we&#8217;ll have fodder for demand gen campaigns&#8230; we&#8217;ll arm our salespeople with value-add materials&#8230; we&#8217;ll be able to upsell and cross-sell our customers&#8230; we&#8217;ll increase recurring revenue&#8230;&#8221; You get the idea.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Make it easy for them</h3>
<p>When standing up a content strategy with a client, we always say that part of our job is to make the whole process as effortless as desired for our subject matter experts. Offer weekly calls to bat around ideas. (Limit those calls to 15 minutes.) Offer to record brainstorm conversations. Offer to draft outlines. Offer to edit. Suggest ideas that might spark new ones. Accomodate their schedules. Work how they work (even if that means emailing an attached Word doc back and forth. *shudders*)</p>
<p>Bottom line: address and eliminate your subject matter expert&#8217;s concern that you&#8217;re just adding work to their plate.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Treat your content effort like an editorial operation</h3>
<p>Be clear about roles and responsibilities. Issue and adhere to deadlines. Provide feedback to improve processes. Use a management tool. (We love Trello for this.) When you make edits or changes, explain why you made them.</p>
<h4 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Keep your subject matter experts informed</h4>
<p>Beyond sending a link or forwarding an email, report to your subject matter experts how their content is doing. Impressions. Clicks. Opens. Shares. Feedback. Comments. Show them that the time and effort they spent on your content marketing initiative is having an impact.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Get execs involved</h3>
<p>Everyone else on a team is a lot more likely to participate in a content marketing effort when they know that their bosses are.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Are these suggestions silver bullets?</h3>
<p>Of course not. Every organization is different. But if a content marketing effort is to survive and sustain and ultimately impact a business, everyone—<em>not just marketing</em>—has to buy in.</p>
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It can help your business generate brand awareness, scale traffic, establish authority, build trust, inform audiences, raise money, facilitate self-education&#8230; its applications are just about (but not quite) endless.
But lots of content marketing efforts die. They lose steam; they go dormant.
They&#8217;re abandoned.
There are a number of reasons why this happens. More often than not, though, a lack of organizational commitment is what kills a content marketing strategy.&#038;source=https://thinkitfirst.com" class="linkedin" target="_blank"></a>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Trust The Process</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">This post isn’t about <s>Ben</s> <s>Harden</s> Maxey or Jo-Jo or Sam Hinkie’s 7,000-word resignation letter. It’s not about a perplexing inability to win on the road against bottom-half teams. Aside from borrowing a hashtag, this post has nothing to do with basketball.</p>
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Marketing

Want to Know the Number One Reason Content Marketing Efforts Die?

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                <p>Related to web projects, prospective clients often ask us, “What about SEO?” Usually they are asking this question because they loosely know that a website and SEO have something to do with each other. Sometimes they’re asking it because they think that’s what they’re supposed to ask. Whatever the driver, we almost always answer that question with…<br />
</p>
<p>More questions.</p>
<p>Because here’s the thing: an overwhelming majority of SMBs think that SEO is the reason you have a website.</p>
<p>It is not. It might be <em>a</em> reason. It is not <e>the</em> reason.</p>
<p>So that’s why we try to pump the brakes on the SEO question by asking more questions. Questions like… </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">How much of your current traffic comes from search?</h3>
<p>The response here usually falls into four buckets:</p>
<p><span style="color: #9D6AC7;">Virtually all of it.</span> Awesome. SEO is important. Let’s talk about our approach to it. (Editor’s note: We’ll cover that in a sec.)</p>
<p><span style="color: #9D6AC7;">A decent amount.</span> Also awesome. SEO is important.</p>
<p><span style="color: #9D6AC7;">Really not much. </span> That’s fine. This indicates a few possible scenarios. It tells us that maybe you haven’t dedicated any resources to SEO. (That’s totally OK, btw.) Or it tells us that maybe search isn’t how your audience accesses you. (Also OK and really good to know.)</p>
<p><span style="color: #9D6AC7;">Not sure.</span> Not a problem. We can investigate.</span></p>
<p>Figuring out how much of your traffic comes from search is an important step towards determining how much emphasis we will need to put on SEO.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">If search is a significant channel, what terms are driving traffic?</h3>
<p>This question is particularly important for B2B companies. Essentially, we want to know the branded vs. topical split.</p>
<p>Branded search terms are just that: branded. It’s someone searching “Think It First” to learn more about our company, Think It First. What’s key here though is that the searcher already knows us. Maybe someone referred us and the search is doing some preliminary research. Maybe they heard one of us speak on a panel and want to learn more about our capabilities. Whatever the motivation, they already know our brand.</p>
<p>Topical terms are different. These are the terms related to what your business does that you want to show up for in search results. For us, “Philadelphia web design” is one. We have plenty more. The person searching those terms does not know Think It First. But if we’ve SEO’d our site, they soon might.</p>
<p>So why is this important?</p>
<p>Again, it’s about knowing how important SEO really is. It’s about getting a sense for how your audience searches, contextual to your business and the problems you solve. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">What do you know about SEO?</h3>
<p>We don’t ask this question condescendingly. It usually comes up organically. We ultimately want to convey that SEO isn’t just about keywords in copy. There is a technical component that we have to satisfy too.</p>
<p>Think of it like this: Google wants to deliver an optimal web experience. Obviously that means a site’s content needs to be relevant to the search, but it also means it needs to do things like load fast and be responsive (aka, mobile friendly). It needs to be accessible and hierarchical. The list of technical SEO requirements is just as important as the keyword strategy.</p>
<figure id="attachment_1358" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1358" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-1358" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/happy-user.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="400" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-1358" class="wp-caption-text">See how happy this person is? Optimal. Web. Experience. Just like Google wants.</figcaption></figure>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Our approach to SEO</span></h3>
<p>We think of SEO in two buckets: foundational and ongoing.</p>
<p>Foundationally, we ensure that the sites we build are prepared for a good first impression with Google. That means a logical URL structure, proper page titles, meta descriptions, lightweight images and graphics, friendly fonts, thoughtful keyword strategies, appropriate redirects, fast page load times and more. Basically we’re saying that when Google meets your site, it will approve.</p>
<p>From there, though, SEO evolves into SEM (search engine marketing). This is where a content strategy comes into play. If you want to result for certain topics, questions, etc., you’ll want to publish content that’s relevant to those searches—and you’ll want to do it on a regular basis. Oftentimes we start talking to clients about this as we approach site launch. It’s a long-term strategy that shows results over time, not instantly. It takes commitment and editorial-like discipline. A content strategy builds a mountain of organized, consumable information that helps your audience find you. It establishes authority and trust. And ideally, it helps you win business.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">How to Write a Creative Brief (And Why Doing it Right Matters)</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">A creative brief is a document that details a design project. It serves as a roadmap, addressing the who, the what, the why and the when. Typically, the recipient of the project’s output will provide the raw input for the design team to synthesize into a document for review.

Simple enough, right? You’d think so, but a creative brief blends unmistakable clarity and uninterpretable detail. That’s sometimes harder to do than it sounds. </p>
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Answering the “What About SEO?” Question with… More Questions

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                <p>A creative brief is a document that details a design project. It serves as a roadmap, addressing the who, the what, the why and the when. Typically, the recipient of the project’s output will provide the raw input for the design team to synthesize into a document for review.</p>
<p>Simple enough, right? You’d think so, but a creative brief blends unmistakable clarity and uninterpretable detail. That’s sometimes harder to do than it sounds.<br />
</p>
<p>Here’s how we work with our clients to craft creative briefs.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Assume No Prior Knowledge</h3>
<p>It’s easy for the creative brief writer to omit details they themselves are already familiar with, but it’s super important to write as if your audience has no prior knowledge of the project.</p>
<p>Be crystal clear in defining the project, its purpose and what the expected milestones, deliverables and timelines are.</p>
<p>If there are relevant background materials such as brand guides or established documentation, include links to those items along with contextual notes.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;color:#f16251">Lots of Short Sentences &gt; Long Meandering Paragraphs</h3>
<p>Again, it’s all about clarity. Designers who execute creative briefs appreciate bite-sized direction. It establishes guardrails. It leaves less room for interpretation. (See what I’m doing here? 😉)</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;color:#f16251">Use Design Elements!</h3>
<p>Design is communication and a creative brief is the perfect place to apply some. Utilize different font sizes to establish sections. Use bullets and numbering. Better yet, design a template for your creative briefs. This way the brief is quick and simple to navigate, digest and reference.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;color:#f16251">If Appropriate, Assign Roles and Responsibilities</h3>
<p>Defining who will do what (and in what sequence) will ensure that everyone on the project knows both what they’re responsible for and what they’re not responsible for. (The latter there is just as important as the former.) The more a creative brief can establish accountability and clarity around expectations, the better.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Share Your First Draft with Someone Not Involved in the Project</h3>
<p>Does it make sense to them? Can they accurately understand the objectives, the process and the roles? Does anything strike them as ambiguous or open-ended? Ask someone not involved in the project to read the creative brief and describe in their own words what it says. If you pass that test, you’re likely in good shape. And if you don’t, better to know now instead of later!</p>
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How to Write a Creative Brief (And Why Doing it Right Matters)

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                <p>Over the years, we&#8217;ve amassed quite a universe of contacts. Clients past and present. Vendors. Partners. Prospects that didn&#8217;t sign that we&#8217;re still close with. Employees that moved on to other cool things.</p>
<p>Recently, we decided that we wanted to do something with that universe. That naturally led us to think &#8220;newsletter!&#8221; We thought about rounding up our most recent blog posts, showcasing our latest projects, and curating a bunch of interesting content from around the web.</p>
<p><span style="color:#f16251;">But then we thought otherwise.</span><br />
</p>
<p>We thought otherwise because that&#8217;s what every other agency newsletter does.</p>
<p>We thought otherwise because <em>&#8220;here&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve been up to</em>&#8221; probably isn&#8217;t all that interesting to our audience. And it definitely isn&#8217;t <em>useful</em>. It&#8217;s actually kind of smug. Nobody likes navel-gazing.</p>
<p><span style="color:#f16251;">Ultimately, though, it came down to our audience.</span> </p>
<p>Every person in our audience is different from the next. They work in different industries. They have different roles. They&#8217;re designers, executives, founders, marketers, CFOs, account reps, lawyers, developers, content specialists, CEOs—you get the idea.</p>
<p>But there was (and is) a single commonality. Every person in our audience relies on technology to get things done.</p>
<p>And that has led us to create <span style="color:#f16251;">Digital Matters</span>, a semi-regular email that contains digital-first ideas, products, and strategies that can help you better do your job and live your life. It’s concise, to-the-point, and simple. <a href="https://us18.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=5d2462d284c5ee32cfe8c9f2c&#038;id=322e3af7e2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You can read all the latest issues here</a>. If you like it, climb aboard and subscribe below!</p>
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                <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&#038;url=https://thinkitfirst.com&#038;title=&#038;summary=Over the years, we&#8217;ve amassed quite a universe of contacts. Clients past and present. Vendors. Partners. Prospects that didn&#8217;t sign that we&#8217;re still close with. Employees that moved on to other cool things.
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Because No One Wants Another Self-Aggrandizing Newsletter in Their Inbox

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                <h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Here’s how to speed yours up</h3>
<p>Google wants to present searchers with a fast internet. As such, sites that take too much time to load get penalized and slip their way down the SERPs.<br />
</p>
<p>Speed (along with 200ish other criteria) wins.</p>
<p>So what if your site is slow? First, confirm.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Test your site’s speed</h3>
<p>Here’s why&#8230;<br />
There are plenty of free tools available that can help you gauge your site’s speed performance. Try <a href="https://gtmetrix.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">GTMetrix</a>, <a href="https://tools.pingdom.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Pingdom</a> or Google’s very own <a href="https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PageSpeed Insights</a>. In reality, you should use multiple speed testers to ensure you’re getting a good data set. These tools will present benchmarks to help you figure out where your site’s speed stands against the rest of the internet. Don’t panic if your grades aren’t that good!</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Let’s talk images</h3>
<p>Most of the speed test tools will provide you with a laundry list of issues and recommendations. Some will be self-explanatory, others confusing. At the top of most lists will be oversized images. High resolution images take time to load. So too do images with large dimensions. Fortunately, there’s compression. You can drastically reduce the file size of your images without compromising visual quality.</p>
<p>One of our favorite tools is <a href="https://tinypng.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">TinyPNG</a>. Simply upload your bloated images (up to 5MB each) and viola! You’ll see file reductions by 60, 70, even 90 percent. “TinyPNG uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG files. By selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is nearly invisible but it makes a very large difference in file size!</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #5eafbf;">A slow loading site is the fastest way to lose a potential customer.</h2>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Review your plugins</h3>
<p>Plugins make the WordPress world go ‘round. They’re great. That said, they can also slow sites down, especially if they’re used en masse. Review your plugins. Make sure you update to the most current versions of those that are mission critical to your site. Then evaluate which ones might not be necessary anymore. For example, if you had a plugin that powered a Facebook feed and that plugin has since been put out of service, deactivate and delete it. Also consider pulling out all the individual analytics plugins and rely solely on Google Analytics.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Consider some plugins</h3>
<p>We know. We just suggested removing aged or unnecessary plugins and are now suggesting you add some. It’s all about being selective. There are plugins designed specifically to improve site speed. <a href="https://wp-rocket.me/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WPRocket</a>, for example, improves page caching, which “creates an ultra-fast load time, essential for improving Search Engine Optimization and increasing conversions.” It also has a cool feature that only loads images once a user scrolls down to them. Neat.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Using gifs?</h3>
<p>Gifs are great for communicating complex ideas in simple ways. But if they’re too long (aka, big), they can drastically slow down a page’s load time. Review any gifs you might be using and explore ways to trim, revise or otherwise reduce their file sizes. One of our favorite gif editors is <a href="https://ezgif.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ezgif.com</a>. It feels bare bones, but it’s a great little editor!</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-921 size-full aligncenter" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ThinkitFirst_Needforspeed_Topgun.gif" alt="" width="480" height="270" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Consider a CDN</h3>
<p>Does your business operate in a wide range of global markets? A content distribution network (CDN) can help your site serve quickly, across geographies. Basically, a CDN stores copies of your site on geographically disparate servers so that local experiences are faster and more reliable.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Speed matters to everyone, not just Google</h3>
<p>A slow loading site is the fastest way to lose a potential customer. So while doing all you can to appease the almighty Google, know that your efforts will be doubly worth it.</p>
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Google wants to present searchers with a fast internet. As such, sites that take too much time to load get penalized and slip their way down the SERPs.&#038;source=https://thinkitfirst.com" class="linkedin" target="_blank"></a>
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                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Successful website projects are a collaboration between you (the client) and the website design agency that you’re working with. In this guide, we’ve put together 5 important steps that are crucial for a winning website project. If your digital agency works in tandem with you to deliver each of these 5 important steps, you’re going to end up with a result that you can both be proud of. More importantly, it will be something that your customers will love.</p>
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                        <p class="tif-mb-0">With so much AI potential out there, it can be challenging to know where or how to begin. Should you start with a massive, customer-facing product? Create your own internal solution to streamline ops? Dabble in an out-of-the-box solution? The answer is a question.</p>
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                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Whether you think so or not, accessibility matters to your business. Here’s why&#8230;</p>
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Google Hates Slow Sites

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                <h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Here’s why that’s a good thing</h3>
<p>Back when newspapers reigned supreme, there was a layout concept that publishers adhered to called “the fold.” The idea was to put the most important headlines and stories at the top of the front page, quite literally above where the paper folded, in order to attract buyers. By and large, it worked.</p>
<p>As the internet became a thing, and people made career moves from print layout to web design, “the fold” concept followed along, albeit in a slightly different way. Instead of representing a physical line, “the fold” became known as the initial viewable real estate of a webpage, prior to any scrolling. Everything of importance had to go above it because there was no way visitors were going to bother scrolling. They probably didn’t even know how to operate a mouse.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to see why this approach was flawed.</p>
<p>If “above the fold” is reserved for only the most important information, what qualifies as important? The usual answer was “EVERYTHING.” And you can imagine how visitors reacted to that. Oh thank you thank you thank you for bombarding me with multiple messages, six different calls-to-action and I can’t even.</p>
<p>Information overload is real. So too is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">paradox of choice</a>. When a visitor is immediately pummeled with too much stuff, they don’t know what to do and they check out.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-924 size-full aligncenter" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Above-and-below-the-fold.png" alt="" width="1024" height="882" srcset="https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Above-and-below-the-fold.png 1024w, https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Above-and-below-the-fold-300x258.png 300w, https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Above-and-below-the-fold-768x662.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #9d6ac7;">It’s time to stop designing for “the fold”</h2>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Here’s why&#8230;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">People Scroll</h3>
<p>There are <a href="https://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">plenty of studies that evidence</a> that people do, in fact scroll. And if you think about it, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Apple News and countless other products have trained us to do it even more. These apps have been designed to encourage scrolling because scrolling equals engagement which equals revenue. We, as a species, are anything but tired of scrolling.</p>
<p>The top of a web page doesn’t need to house everything of importance. All it needs to do is set the hook and encourage the visitor to progress a little further, and a little further, and a little further. That’s engagement. And an engaged visitor is more likely to do the thing you want them to do, whether that’s click on an ad or fill out a form or something else entirely.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">People are on their phones</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet-usage-statistics#post-navigation-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Global mobile traffic is up 222 percent over the last seven years</a>. TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO PERCENT! That number shows no signs of slowing down either. That means the space “above the fold” is a lot smaller for millions of people. Trying to cram all of that “important stuff” up high isn’t going to work. And with hundreds of different devices, various screen sizes and a range of mobile web browsers, you really aren’t even in control of “the fold” anymore.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">So now what?</h3>
<p>Take a fresh look at your site and be honest with yourself. Does it feel top heavy? Are you throwing too much content at a visitor as soon as they arrive? Can you pinpoint a single message and call-to-action?</p>
<p>Then take a look at your analytics. How do bounce rates look? What about pageview times? Datapoints like these can help you understand how visitors are behaving on your site.</p>
<p>Finally, don’t panic. A site designed for “the fold” isn’t a lost cause. Start by evaluating your brand’s story. Revisit your messaging, positioning and buyer journey. Then ask yourself: does your site tell that story?</p>
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                <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&#038;url=https://thinkitfirst.com&#038;title=&#038;summary=Here’s why that’s a good thing
Back when newspapers reigned supreme, there was a layout concept that publishers adhered to called “the fold.” The idea was to put the most important headlines and stories at the top of the front page, quite literally above where the paper folded, in order to attract buyers. By and large, it worked.
As the internet became a thing, and people made career moves from print layout to web design, “the fold” concept followed along, albeit in a slightly different way. Instead of representing a physical line, “the fold” became known as the initial viewable real estate of a webpage, prior to any scrolling. Everything of importance had to go above it because there was no way visitors were going to bother scrolling. They probably didn’t even know how to operate a mouse.
It’s not hard to see why this approach was flawed.&#038;source=https://thinkitfirst.com" class="linkedin" target="_blank"></a>
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                            <h2 class="title tif-h1 position-relative tif-mb-0">Have some more</h2>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Traditional Wireframing Sucks</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">More often than not, a wireframe deliverable is a bunch of boxes and some squiggly lines. It&#8217;s static and unclickable, foregoing any sense of interactivity and realness. A client looks at them and thinks… Ok… these look… fine? Best case, they trust you and let you do your thing. Worst case, they start to wonder what they’re paying for.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">What is a Design System and Why Should You Care?</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Underneath that delightful, satisfying user experience is a design system, a collection of visual and technical definitions that rule a product. Here&#8217;s why business leaders need to pay attention to them.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Because No One Wants Another Self-Aggrandizing Newsletter in Their Inbox</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Over the years, we’ve amassed quite a universe of contacts. Clients past and present. Vendors. Partners. Prospects that didn’t sign that we’re still close with. Employees that moved on to other cool things.

Recently, we decided that we wanted to do something with that universe. That naturally led us to think “newsletter!” We thought about rounding up our most recent blog posts, showcasing our latest projects, and curating a bunch of interesting content from around the web.

But then we thought otherwise.
</p>
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                <a href="/blog/digital-matters-launch/" class="stretched-link"></a>
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It’s Time to Stop Designing for “The Fold”

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                <h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">It’s not about buying a website or digital product; it’s about applying a thoughtful methodology to create value for your business.</h3>
<p>This post isn’t about <del datetime="2022-03-09T16:17:11+00:00">Ben,</del> <del datetime="2023-11-13T01:41:51+00:00">Harden,</del> Maxey or Jo-Jo or Sam Hinkie’s 7,000-word resignation letter. It’s not about a perplexing inability to win on the road against bottom-half teams. Aside from borrowing a hashtag, this post has nothing to do with basketball.</p>
<p>This post is about our process; the Think It First process. We want to share it because we believe in it. We believe in the value it offers to our clients. We believe it&#8217;s what makes us different and a true strategic partner to our clients. So let’s dig in.<br />
</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color: #B9CC65;">&#8220;The process is the product.&#8221;</h2>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Yes, companies hire us to design and develop websites and consult on digital products, but those outputs are not the endgame. Our process and our experience are what they buy. The process has value because it gives structure, clarity, and predictability to our collaboration. It gives our clients confidence that we’re strategic and thoughtful in our approach. It shows that nothing we do is “one-size-fits-all” and that from-the-ground-up customization beats “off-the-shelf” templates any day of the week.</p>
<p>Over the years, we’ve refined our process to 10 steps:<br />
• Kickoff<br />
• Planning, Sitemaps, and User flows<br />
• Brand Identity and Positioning<br />
• Content and Copywriting<br />
• Ancillary Content<br />
• Blueprinting<br />
• Prototyping<br />
• Code and Development<br />
• Foundational SEO<br />
• Device Testing and Launch</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-935 aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Kickoff.svg" alt="" width="59" height="49" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Kickoff</h3>
<p>We start by asking questions and listening. We don’t start by telling or dictating. We want to understand deeply how your business works, who your customers are, what pain points you solve, and your revenue models. We synthesize all of this information in the context of what we’ve been charged to build for you.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-936 size-full aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Planning.svg" alt="" width="90" height="82" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Planning, Sitemaps, and Userflows</h3>
<p>We believe strongly in usability. At its core, the structure for a product—whether it’s a website a mobile app, or something else entirely—must allow us to understand where we are as users, and where the information we want is, in relation to our position. Products that consider organization, structure, and logic consistently outperform the competition and provide tangible benefits to users.</p>
<p>If we’re refreshing an existing product, we’ll create an existing site map or user flow showing the current architecture. Using these artifacts as a guide, we then develop a revised version that outlines a proposed structure that includes to-be-developed features and functionalities.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-930 size-full aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Brand-Identity.svg" alt="" width="75" height="43" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Brand Identity and Positioning</h3>
<p>There are a million articles on what a brand is. We think it’s a gut feeling. It’s look, feel, style, tone, mission and so much more—all balled up into something you can’t quite put your finger on but know when you feel it. We think the keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency, authenticity, and accountability. Our job is to take those keys and infuse them into what we’re building for you. Tactically, that entails using existing or creating new brand materials such as logos, color palettes, fonts, and styles.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-931 aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Content.svg" alt="" width="83" height="63" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Content and Copywriting</h3>
<p>For us, it all comes down to creating purposeful designs. When content is an integral part of the design process, each page will successfully bridge gaps from one to the next and take the viewer on a literal journey through your company. It’s succinct and fluid and cohesive; not pieced together and forced to meet a fleeting need.</p>
<p>This is when we direct a cooperative effort to create a “master copy” working document that outlines all existing website copy. If starting from scratch, we develop a content outline to help frame your words. Our editors provide support to fine-tune, review, and make suggestions to improve the messaging and informational value.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Ancillary Content</h3>
<p>Over the years, most businesses have accumulated a variety of infographics, newsletters, press articles, webinars, videos… you get the idea. We collect whatever you’ve got, review it, and propose ways in which we can use, display, archive, or otherwise repurpose—because at the end of the day, this stuff can be useful to both your future users and search engines.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-929 aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Blueprints.svg" alt="" width="57" height="57" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Blueprinting</h3>
<p>Blueprints, or wireframes as some call them represent the design of connections between different screens within a website or product. Decisions related to the customer and/or user’s “experience” are made here, ultimately allowing us to craft a desired behavioral outcome from elements on the screen.</p>
<p><a href="https://thinkitfirst.com/blog/traditional-wireframing-sucks/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">We take blueprinting seriously</a>.</p>
<p>As a key part of our design process, blueprinting allows us to plan your site visually. But what good are hastily drawn boxes and squiggly lines representing text on a page? We go beyond your standard wireframes and produce the equivalent to full site designs without color or images. The idea is to inform layout, typography, size, and relationship while limiting distractions to keep you and your team focused on the goal at this stage: the design of an experience your customers will love. We think of our wireframing as not only a valuable deliverable to our clients but also an internal roadmap for our visual designers and developers to reference as they build mockups, prototypes, and functionality.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-938 aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Prototyping.svg" alt="" width="80" height="53" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Prototyping</h3>
<p>Armed with our sitemap, brand, content, and user-centric design direction, we now shift to the look and feel of the site. Through a series of design mockups, we collaborate with our client to synthesize the previous six steps of the process. We make collective decisions on imagery, color scheme, video, iconography, graphics, and more, taking the project beyond the written word. We create static design comps, visually producing an accurate picture of how the product will ultimately look and feel.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-941 aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Code.svg" alt="" width="58" height="55" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Code and Development</h3>
<p>Now we’re getting under the hood. This is where things start to come to life, as we set up a private staging environment to build. With the URL to this staging environment, you can view the product in progress. But don’t worry: no one else, not even search engines, can find it.</p>
<p>At this stage, we’re establishing the content management system, integrations, code for all forms and third-party apps, and any custom functionality needed to build out the project. If we need content or data migrated from other sources, we’ll do that too.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-939 aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SEO.svg" alt="" width="62" height="79" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Foundational SEO</h3>
<p>SEO. Search engine optimization. Here we’re talking about making sure that Google and the other search engines can find your site. We optimize our projects from the start to be search-friendly, including setting up proper formatting of site titles, pages, and meta tags; installing and configuring SEO plugins; hooking up Google Analytics, Search Console and Webmaster Tools to make sure the site’s getting indexed, crawled and monitored; generating XML sitemaps; optimizing images; formatting .htaccess and robots.txt files for site transparency to bots; and installing anti-spam features. We even provide a quick SEO training session so that you can manage this stuff going forward.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-932 aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Device-Testing.svg" alt="" width="68" height="61" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Device Testing and Launch</h3>
<p>A Think it First website is a flexible and durable marketing tool designed to evolve with your business and the ever-changing tech world around us.</p>
<p>The landscape of web browsers and devices changes regularly and our approach is to look forward, not back. We optimize for all the major current browsers at the time of release including IE 10+, Safari 5+, Firefox 30+, and Chrome 35+.</p>
<p>Responsiveness is also mission-critical. Every site we build will look, feel and function properly on all the major devices: desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile phone.</p>
<p>The last piece of this step in the process focuses on debugging and device testing, launching and maintaining a 30-day post-launch quality assurance program.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-933 aligncenter" role="img" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Full-Circle.svg" alt="" width="59" height="68" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">The Process Comes Full Circle</h3>
<p>By now you know you’re not just “buying a website or an app.” Our iterative, collaborative process designed to help your business put its best digital foot forward is what we offer. We believe in it and we have hundreds of projects that support its value.</p>
<p>So as we say here in Philly: Trust the Process. Just note that the Think It First process is proven. The Sixers’ process? Still TBD…</p>
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This post isn’t about Ben, Harden, Maxey or Jo-Jo or Sam Hinkie’s 7,000-word resignation letter. It’s not about a perplexing inability to win on the road against bottom-half teams. Aside from borrowing a hashtag, this post has nothing to do with basketball.
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                            <h2 class="title tif-h1 position-relative tif-mb-0">More this way</h2>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Traditional Wireframing Sucks</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">More often than not, a wireframe deliverable is a bunch of boxes and some squiggly lines. It&#8217;s static and unclickable, foregoing any sense of interactivity and realness. A client looks at them and thinks… Ok… these look… fine? Best case, they trust you and let you do your thing. Worst case, they start to wonder what they’re paying for.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have) – Part I</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">We&#8217;ve been asked a lot of questions over the years. Part I of this series aims to answer some of the questions we get asked time and time again.</p>
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                <a href="/blog/questions-we-regularly-get-and-you-likely-have-part-i/" class="stretched-link"></a>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Because No One Wants Another Self-Aggrandizing Newsletter in Their Inbox</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Over the years, we’ve amassed quite a universe of contacts. Clients past and present. Vendors. Partners. Prospects that didn’t sign that we’re still close with. Employees that moved on to other cool things.

Recently, we decided that we wanted to do something with that universe. That naturally led us to think “newsletter!” We thought about rounding up our most recent blog posts, showcasing our latest projects, and curating a bunch of interesting content from around the web.

But then we thought otherwise.
</p>
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                <a href="/blog/digital-matters-launch/" class="stretched-link"></a>
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Trust The Process

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                <h4 style="text-align: center;">Earlier this year, we shared Part I of our “Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have)&#8221; piece. Let’s get going on Part II!</h4>
<p></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">How will I know if anyone is visiting my site?</h3>
<p>Crucial to any digital product is the analytics under the hood, namely Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Both of these products are free.</p>
<p>Google Analytics will show you how people are arriving at and behaving on your site. You’ll be able to know where they’re coming from, what devices they’re using, how long they’re staying, what content they’re engaging with, where they’re leaving and so much more.</p>
<p>Google Search Console will show you how your site is performing, in the eyes of the almighty Google. It will identify errors, broken links, and other things that you can fix to improve your standing.</p>
<p>If you already have GA and GSC accounts set up from a previous site, great. We can use those. If not, we’re happy to get them up and running for you.</p>
<p>Struggling with what to do with all the data? We give our clients access to a suite of high-power digital marketing tools to drive more leads, convert more sales, and prove ROI just like the Fortune 500 companies do it.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">What if we end up wanting to change or add something to our scope?</h3>
<p>That’s a good question that we’ll answer with a question: “Why?” We want to be sure that any additions or requested changes to a site-in-development are aligned with the site’s role in relation to your business. Provided we reach consensus, we’ll scope out a change order. We’ll only begin work on the request with your written approval.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">How compatible will the product be across devices and browsers?</h3>
<p>We design for all major devices and browsers. Obviously those trends change, so we keep up. Ultimately, we practice responsive design, ensuring that our products look, feel and function appropriately on any screen. If, on the off chance, you need to support an older device or an older browser, we can make that happen with some additional planning and scope.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">What exactly do you mean by “information architecture?”</h3>
<p>Information architecture is the relationship of how all the different pages of a website are related to each other. We communicate this visually through a <a href="https://xd.adobe.com/view/d1d2f84a-c165-454e-6092-bfed03dbfe5f-a7e3/?fullscreen" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sitemap</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">What is a Think it First Blueprint?</h3>
<p>It’s <a href="https://thinkitfirst.com/blog/traditional-wireframing-sucks/">our take on the wireframe</a>. We feel that traditional wireframes and their simple boxes and squiggly lines don’t effectively communicate any sense of realness or interactivity. The more we can bring a wireframe to life, the better the sense of the final outcome you’ll have. In terms of a final design, a Think it First blueprint isn’t really missing much. Color, final graphics, and imagery are the only elements purposefully left out. This is done to limit distraction from aesthetics in order to focus on the real structure of the design.</p>
<p>Blueprinting also helps us figure out functionality dilemmas earlier in the process, allows us to test on various devices sooner rather than later and make iterations and changes easier to execute.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Don&#8217;t see an answer you like?</h3>
<p>First and foremost, we are here to help. Our work is completely custom and every new client poses a unique set of challenges we love to solve. We also try our best to educate and inform you along the ride with us. Let&#8217;s talk about your ideas and how our work can help them materialize. <a href="mailto:hello@thinkitfirst.com">Reach out to us!</a></p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have) – Part I</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">We&#8217;ve been asked a lot of questions over the years. Part I of this series aims to answer some of the questions we get asked time and time again.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Answering the “What About SEO?” Question with… More Questions</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Related to web projects, prospective clients often ask us, “What about SEO?” Usually they are asking this question because they loosely know that a website and SEO have something to do with each other. Sometimes they’re asking it because they think that’s what they’re supposed to ask. Whatever the driver, we almost always answer that question with… More questions. </p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Emailing with Clients: 13 Tips, Zero Tricks</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Email is the perfect blend of art and science. It&#8217;s a skill honed over time. The earlier you treat it as such, the better off you&#8217;ll be in the long run. So here are some tips to getting more out of email.</p>
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Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have) – Part II

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                <h3 style="text-align: center;">Here’s what that is and why we think it matters</h3>
<p>Want to know a secret about most business awards?</p>
<p>They’re pay-to-play opportunities that usually happen in one of two ways. Either the business applies and pays an application fee to be considered or it’s “nominated” and asked to purchase a branding or marketing package in order to “receive” the award.</p>
<p>Yuck, right?</p>
<p>There are, however, awards programs out there that are above the board, transparent and data-driven. <a href="https://clutch.co/press-releases/recognizes-1000-best-b2b-service-providers-its-exclusive-2019-1000-list" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Clutch 1000</a> is one of those programs—and we’re pumped we made the 2019 edition* and as a part of its <a href="https://clutch.co/web-designers/philadelphia" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Best Design Firms</a> list.</p>
<p><em>*Yes, we know we’re about six months behind on sharing this news, but times like these are anything but normal. Cut us (and everyone!) a break. </em>?</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-946 size-full" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Clutch_GlobalTop1000-thinkitfirst.png" alt="" width="434" height="434" srcset="https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Clutch_GlobalTop1000-thinkitfirst.png 434w, https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Clutch_GlobalTop1000-thinkitfirst-300x300.png 300w, https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Clutch_GlobalTop1000-thinkitfirst-150x150.png 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #F16251">What makes the Clutch 1000 legit?</h3>
<p>In short, it’s entirely client review based. Firms that make it have no influence. Clutch is a B2B platform that uses verified client reviews to create authentic ratings across 400 industries. They do the reaching out. They have real conversations with clients like ours. We’re not even a part of it.</p>
<p>That’s why we’re so proud of our perfect five-star Clutch rating. It doesn’t speak to who we know or how much we paid. It speaks to our work, our team, and the value we provide to our clients. To them, we say thank you.</p>
<p><a href="https://clutch.co/profile/think-it-first" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">And just in case you want to read some of our reviews… </a></p>
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Want to know a secret about most business awards?
They’re pay-to-play opportunities that usually happen in one of two ways. Either the business applies and pays an application fee to be considered or it’s “nominated” and asked to purchase a branding or marketing package in order to “receive” the award.
Yuck, right?
There are, however, awards programs out there that are above the board, transparent and data-driven. The Clutch 1000 is one of those programs—and we’re pumped we made the 2019 edition* and as a part of its Best Design Firms list.&#038;source=https://thinkitfirst.com" class="linkedin" target="_blank"></a>
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                            <h2 class="title tif-h1 position-relative tif-mb-0">Care for another?</h2>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Because No One Wants Another Self-Aggrandizing Newsletter in Their Inbox</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Over the years, we’ve amassed quite a universe of contacts. Clients past and present. Vendors. Partners. Prospects that didn’t sign that we’re still close with. Employees that moved on to other cool things.

Recently, we decided that we wanted to do something with that universe. That naturally led us to think “newsletter!” We thought about rounding up our most recent blog posts, showcasing our latest projects, and curating a bunch of interesting content from around the web.

But then we thought otherwise.
</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Announcing Think It First Summer Hours</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">This week marks the beginning of our first foray into summer hours. For the next three months, we will shift to a four-day work week, giving everyone on the team Fridays off. As a distributed team, our culture is built on accountability, transparency and communication. Those characteristics are what will make this work and we’re excited to build on our commitment to a healthy work-life balance.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Trust The Process</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">This post isn’t about <s>Ben</s> <s>Harden</s> Maxey or Jo-Jo or Sam Hinkie’s 7,000-word resignation letter. It’s not about a perplexing inability to win on the road against bottom-half teams. Aside from borrowing a hashtag, this post has nothing to do with basketball.</p>
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Humblebrag Time: Think It First Named a Clutch 1000 Firm

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                <p>Accessibility is an increasingly popular topic amongst web design and development circles—and for good reason. At a high level, accessibility is about making your site, your app, your product usable to everyone. Yes, that includes people with auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech or visual disabilities, but it also includes those without. (Think the elderly, someone with a broken hand that will eventually heal, rural users with slow connections.) <a href="https://medium.com/points-san-francisco/why-accessibility-matters-7ca6762ec0b5" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Software developer, Isaac Zepada, says it best</a>:</p>
<h2 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">&#8220;Accessibility is about everybody. Accessibility is empathy.&#8221;</h2>
<p></p>
<p>Now it’s easy to picture a business owner hearing that and thinking, <em>“That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t apply to my customers. I’m not going to invest in something that doesn’t impact my bottom line.”</em></p>
<p>That picture, however, is wrong.</p>
<p>Whether you think so or not, accessibility matters to your business. Here’s why…</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Legal Implications</h3>
<p>Google “web accessibility lawsuits.”</p>
<p>Top result? <a href="https://www.essentialaccessibility.com/blog/web-accessibility-lawsuits/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ESSENTIAL ACCESSIBILITY</a>: “A 2018 analysis by international legal firm Seyfarth Shaw, the number of federal lawsuits filed in response to web inaccessibility was almost three times higher than the year before – it spiked from 814 to 2,258!”</p>
<p>Second result? The National Law Review: “<a href="https://www.natlawreview.com/article/when-good-sites-go-bad-growing-risk-website-accessibility-litigation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">When Good Sites Go Bad: The Growing Risk of Website Accessibility Litigation.</a>”</p>
<p>Still on the first SERP? Fortune Magazine says you can be like Queen B: <a href="https://fortune.com/2019/09/21/beyonce-lawsuit-website-ada-compliant/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Beyoncé Was Sued Over Her Website Violating the Americans With Disabilities Act. And You Could Be Too.</a></p>
<p>The point is this: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) says that services available to the public can’t exclude those with disabilities. And while the law doesn’t explicitly talk about the internet, it is “<a href="https://www.boia.org/blog/6-unexpected-benefits-of-web-accessibility" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">broad enough that the U.S. Department of Justice has concluded that the lack of accessibility for websites may be a violation of the ADA.</a>”</p>
<p>When you invest in accessibility you’re protecting yourself from potential legal action. (NOTE: We are not lawyers. This is not legal advice.)</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Search Implications</h3>
<p>Amongst 200 other ranking factors, Google values accessibility. Sites that don’t meet accessibility standards will get dinged. If search matters to your business, accessibility matters to your business. There’s really not much more to say.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">It&#8217;s What&#8217;s Right</h3>
<p>We praise companies that reduce their carbon footprint, improve working conditions, invest in local communities and generally practice good corporate citizenship. We praise these actions because they are right. Adhering to accessibility standards should be no different. (In fact, it’s probably easier to get your website up to snuff than it is to do those other things.)</p>
<p>Companies should follow accessibility best practices for all the reasons we’ve discussed, but if for no other reason, they should do it because it helps people. As more and more of our daily life gets powered by the internet, being part of the effort that ensures that everyone can benefit is the right thing to do.</p>
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                <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&#038;url=https://thinkitfirst.com&#038;title=&#038;summary=Accessibility is an increasingly popular topic amongst web design and development circles—and for good reason. At a high level, accessibility is about making your site, your app, your product usable to everyone. Yes, that includes people with auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech or visual disabilities, but it also includes those without. (Think the elderly, someone with a broken hand that will eventually heal, rural users with slow connections.) Software developer, Isaac Zepada, says it best:
&#8220;Accessibility is about everybody. Accessibility is empathy.&#8221;&#038;source=https://thinkitfirst.com" class="linkedin" target="_blank"></a>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">But Can&#8217;t I Just Use a WordPress Builder?</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">You could. But you shouldn&#8217;t. Here&#8217;s why. </p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Google Hates Slow Sites</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Google wants to present searchers with a fast internet. As such, sites that take too much time to load get penalized and slip their way down the SERPs.</p>
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                <a href="/blog/google-hates-slow-sites/" class="stretched-link"></a>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">How Secure is Your Company&#8217;s Website?</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Nobody needs to be convinced that web security matters. We all read the latest breach headlines. We all know a colleague whose company’s site was hacked. But what most businesses don’t know how to do is gauge the security of their own site. That’s usually a result of not knowing where to start.</p>
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Three Simple Reasons Why Accessibility Matters to Your Business

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                <h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Do you offer Maintenance?</h3>
<p>The answer is yes &#8212; of course! A Think it First website is a flexible and durable marketing tool that’s designed to evolve with you and the changing tech world around us. And our goal has always been to help you get the most from your website investment long after launch. Today, it’s so important to keep your site maintained, updated, and secure so that you present an optimal experience to your customers on all the devices they use. Investing incrementally in maintenance is the best way to protect your site’s overall appeal and value, keep you safe and secure, and spot and fix bugs on the regular.</p>
<p>Contact us about <a href="/expertise/web-mobile-development">Hosting and Maintenance Plans</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">So what is my role in all of this?</h3>
<p>This is going to be your website so we ask that you remain involved and responsive for the duration of the project. We will do most of the heavy-lifting, and keep you updated about how things are going and what we need to keep the project moving forward. Some of the things we will need from you: Access to existing accounts and passwords for certain services like DNS registry, old websites, FTP, etc or introductions to the parties that have access to these resources.</p>
<p><strong>Your involvement is critical to help keep the project on track. </strong></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">What if I need to put things on hold for a bit?</h3>
<p>We get it, stuff comes up. If at any point you need to put the project on hold, we can pause. Once you’re ready to get moving again, there is a 5% restart fee to continue.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Why do you use WordPress?</h3>
<p>WordPress is open source content management software and currently powers over 30% of all websites on the internet. The project is contributed to by tens of thousands of developers all over the world and has grown from a blogging platform to a fully-featured CMS option when executed correctly. WordPress allows us to develop flexible and customizable websites to modern standards and observes web development best practices. Furthermore, the community of web developers that use WordPress reaches far and wide and allows us to tap into this collective intelligence and bring that wealth of experience to your project.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">How long will it take to appear at the top of Search Rankings?</h3>
<p>The time it takes for your website to appear on page 1 of Google depends on a number of factors. It depends on the search phrase people are using to find your website and the number of other websites that are also available for those search phrases. Nobody can truly say how long it will take for your website to appear at the top of search engine results pages (including people who actually work for Google), however, there are a number of factors that can improve your chances. Building your website on WordPress is a good start as WordPress has some great <a href="/expertise/web-mobile-development">Search Engine Optimization</a> fundamentals built-in. Creating unique and interesting content on a regular basis for your website is also critical to increase your visibility amongst search engines. Launching your website and then forgetting about it is a surefire way to get lost amongst the noise.</p>
<p>We are happy to talk to you more about your <a href="/expertise/web-mobile-development">search engine strategy</a>, just reach out.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">How will I know if anyone is visiting my website?</h3>
<p>We will install Google Analytics / Search Console software on your new website in order to see a wide range of statistics about your website including the number of visits, page views than the amount of time people are spending on your website. If you already have these accounts on an existing website, great! We can use them instead.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">What happens if I want to add some features to the website while you’re building it?</h3>
<p>We like to be flexible and responsive to your needs, we also like to deliver what we promise within the timeframes and budgets we have allowed. If you ask us to add new features to your website while we are building it, will most likely ask why? If we all agree that your new request will help us achieve our objectives then we will be more than happy to oblige.</p>
<p>If this new feature is something you would like to add to your website but is not directly tied to your original objectives, then we will suggest a change order or possibly we will schedule it for a second iteration of the website once it has been launched. Change Orders will be priced at a blended creative rate of $150/hr. The blended creative rate is a mixed rate including strategy, marketing consulting, graphic design, and web development. The scheduling of a new phase after the initial launch of the website will require a new proposal or an <a href="/request-a-proposal/">ongoing maintenance plan</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">How compatible will the new website be across devices and browsers?</h3>
<p>The new website will work across all major, current browsers and devices at the time of release. If you, or your client base, require support on browsers that pre-date 2016, we can accommodate these specific technology requests with additional effort.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">How many design comps will we receive for review?</h3>
<p>We produce one (1) set of design mock-ups provided for consideration. TIF has spent years defining a process to produce accurate, strategic designs based on all of the knowledge gained about your organization in the early discovery steps as well as Think it First&#8217;s combined industry experience. This design set will include the home page and a select group of secondary pages needed to convey the overall design intent. We also include one main design plus the opportunity for you to make up to two rounds of revisions.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">What is information architecture?</h3>
<p>Information architecture is the relationship of how all the different pages of a website are related to each other. This is communicated visually through a sitemap.</p>
<p><a href="https://xd.adobe.com/view/d1d2f84a-c165-454e-6092-bfed03dbfe5f-a7e3/?fullscreen">Example of a TIF sitemap</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">What is a TIF Blueprint?</h3>
<p>A TIF Blueprint is an interactive prototype (or wireframe). It&#8217;s a &#8220;blue&#8221; and white version of your website that is designed to prove the functionality and features as they will work in the browser. <a href="/blog/traditional-wireframing-sucks/">TIF Prototypes are not your average wireframe</a>. They are very polished, however, design elements such as color and imagery are not applied at this stage. A pivotal point in the project, the prototype is built to allow all parties to make final decisions on the functionality as well as add critical input to the important design and style of the website.</p>
<p><a href="https://xd.adobe.com/view/ae7ffa83-12f6-42af-7292-91997ee6a897-d84e/?fullscreen" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Example of a TIF Blueprint</a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Any other costs I should be aware of?</h3>
<p>We strive to make the price quoted in our proposals all-inclusive; however, there are times when other incidental expenses may occur. In these instances, we ask that you reimburse Think it First for all out-of-pocket expenses incurred in performing our jobs. Potential incidental expenses may include, stock photography, video or custom fonts.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color:#f16251">Part II – coming soon!</h3>
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                            <h2 class="title tif-h1 position-relative tif-mb-0">Also read</h2>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have) – Part II</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Earlier this year, we shared Part I of our “Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have)&#8221; piece. Let’s get going on Part II!</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Trust The Process</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">This post isn’t about <s>Ben</s> <s>Harden</s> Maxey or Jo-Jo or Sam Hinkie’s 7,000-word resignation letter. It’s not about a perplexing inability to win on the road against bottom-half teams. Aside from borrowing a hashtag, this post has nothing to do with basketball.</p>
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                        <h2 class="tif-mb-md-25 tif-mb-20">Humblebrag Time: Think It First Named a Clutch 1000 Firm</h2>
                        <p class="tif-mb-0">Yeah, we win awards, too. But we&#8217;re not going to brag about it. Oh wait&#8230;</p>
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Questions We Regularly Get (And You Likely Have) – Part I

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                <h3 style="text-align: center;">Most businesses don’t know the answer to that question. Let’s fix that.</h3>
<p>Nobody needs to be convinced that web security matters. We all read the latest breach headlines. We all know a colleague whose company’s site was hacked. But what most businesses don’t know how to do is gauge the security of their own site. That’s usually a result of not knowing where to start.<br />
So let’s start.<br />
</p>
<p>Here’s a quick checklist that can help a business establish a baseline for the security of their company site.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Who Has Access?</h3>
<p>This is a crucial first question to ask. We can’t tell you many times we’ve gone under the hood of a company site to discover a bunch of admin accounts for people that don’t even work for the company anymore. That’s a security risk. An equally big risk: a single admin account shared by multiple people. Yikes. Bottom line: get a count on who has access to your site, what permission levels they have and then determine what, if any, action needs to be taken.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #f16251;">Passwords, Passwords, Passwords</h3>
<p><em>qwerty. password. drowssap. password1234.</em><br />
This is not a Michael Scott joke. These are some of the most common passwords in the world. Yet the overwhelming percentage of security issues stem from lousy, weak and flat out stupid passwords.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-952 size-full" src="http://thinkitfirst2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/TIF_Password_theoffice.png" alt="" width="625" height="621" srcset="https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/TIF_Password_theoffice.png 625w, https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/TIF_Password_theoffice-300x298.png 300w, https://wp.thinkitfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/TIF_Password_theoffice-150x150.png 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px" /></p>
<p>Once you have a grasp on who has access to your site, institute a password policy. Require them to be complicated and consider a corporate password manager like <a href="http://www.lastpass.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lastpass</a> or <a href="https://1password.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1Password</a>. Then establish a mandatory password change schedule.</p>
<p>This all may feel like overkill, but we humans are, in fact, the weakest link. Strict password policies can help.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #F16251 ">Backups?</h3>
<p>Imagine this situation. Someone on your team is making some changes to the company site. They break something and the entire site goes down. They’re not sure what they did. You could spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out and fix what went wrong or you could revert to a backup point that launches a version of the site as it existed before the breakage.</p>
<p>The majority of the quality web hosts like <a href="https://getflywheel.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Flywheel</a> and <a href="https://wpengine.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">WPEngine</a> run automatic daily backups. Some require manual backups. Either way, find out what your setup is and develop a backup frequency.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #F16251 ">Plugins</h3>
<p>Plugins are a part of what makes WordPress great—but they are not immune to bugs or security holes. As a site admin, ensuring that all your plugins are up-to-date will reduce security risks. Review your plugins monthly and update accordingly. Pro Tip: run a backup of your site before you update core plugins just in case there are incompatibility issues.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #F16251 ">What Version of WordPress Are You On?</h3>
<p>The answer needs to be “the latest.” Running on the latest version of WordPress ensures that you’re taking advantage of all the CMS has to offer and its latest protections. A quick look at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress#Release_history" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">release history and notes</a> will reemphasize why this matters.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #F16251 ">See That Little Padlock in Your Browser’s Address Bar?</h3>
<p>That means that this webpage is secure. thinkitfirst.com has a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate that encrypts communication between your browser and the server where the site lives. SSL encryption is critical on sites that accept sensitive user information such as payments, but it really is necessary on any website these days. In fact, Google Chrome will now warn users if the site they are going to is not secure. Not a great look.</p>
<p>But pay heed: just because you have an SSL certificate running on your website doesn’t mean that it is configured properly and fully secure. Certificates can expire, too, so keep an eye on how the certificate renewal process is set up.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center; color: #F16251 ">Where is your Site Hosted?</h3>
<p>Basic hosting plans can seem like a great solution, because you get what you need for less. But often, critical features (like backups) are add-ons that drive up the cost. Managed hosting plans from providers like <a href="https://getflywheel.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Flywheel</a>, <a href="https://wpengine.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WPEngine</a>, and <a href="https://pantheon.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Pantheon</a> include these because they, like us, understand how important they are. They will also handle updates to WordPress’ core codebase as well as other security features that can end up saving you a lot of money over the long term.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, web security is a never ending fight. But by following even a few basic strategies, you’ll be doing more than most.</p>
<p>Now go change your passwords.</p>
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