Nevada sees drop in underwater homes but retains No. 1 ranking

Nevada posted the second-biggest drop in homes with mortgages worth more than value in the second quarter, but the decline couldn't keep the state out of the top spot for such underwater homes.

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Poverty is a medical condition, study finds

The link between achievement and income is well documented, but a new study has confirmed that the effects of poverty on children are physiological as much as they are social.

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Housing Authority director under scrutiny

Executive Director John Hill, who has led the agency that provides housing to low-income families since 2010, is under fire from several housing authority commissioners who claim he's violated multiple agency policies.

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From PJ’s to Pumps – What to Wear When Working From Home?

By Cathi Nelson If you are a work from home women like me, it is likely you spend a good part of your day in yoga pants, sneakers, and a comfy sweatshirt. In fact, my partner and I work remotely and many days we laugh that it is four o’clock and we are still in our […]

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$30m car scandal goes ‘to the top’

THE former Jeep boss accused of misusing $30 million of company cash claims his spending had the blessings of his bosses at the time.

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Cash Converters in hot water again

CASH Converters has exceeded the legal limit for interest rates and charges to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, a fresh class action alleges.

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Popular restaurant infested with cockroaches

AUSTRALIANS love this restaurant’s dumplings. Or at least, they did. The discovery of rats, cockroaches flies and faeces could change that.

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Draft order would OK keeping Switch as Nevada Power Co. customer

CARSON CITY — A draft order has been prepared in advance of Thursday's Public Utilities Commission meeting that would approve an agreement reached between Switch, NV Energy and state regulators to keep the the data storage company as a customer of Nevada Power Co.

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Taxable sales rise statewide, Clark County

Sales of tangible goods sold by Nevada businesses rose 2.1 percent year over year in the month, to $4.34 billion, the state Taxation Department said Wednesday.

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Allegiant Travel Co. notches 50th straight profitable quarter

Allegiant Travel Co., parent company of Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air, reported its 50th straight profitable quarter on Wednesday despite lower ticket prices and load factors than the same quarter a year ago.

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Allegiant Air execs at controls of flight that landed with low fuel

Two Allegiant Air executives, the vice president of operations and the director of flight safety, were at the controls of the flight that made an emergency landing last week because it was nearly out of fuel.

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New company operating Ashley Furniture HomeStores in Las Vegas

A new company is running the four Ashley Furniture HomeStores in Las Vegas.

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New park near MGM arena showing signs of green

It might not be drawing all the publicity as its neighboring arena project on the Strip, but the new park under construction next to New York-New York that will lead people from the Strip to the $375 million arena is showing its first green signs.

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Major bicycle ride gets third organizer in three years

The bicycle ride in Las Vegas on the day after the Interbike trade show in September has its third organizer in three years.

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Wynn Resorts profits fall under pressure from Macau operations

Macau's slumping casino market contributed to a 72 percent decline in profits at Wynn Resorts Ltd. in the second quarter.

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Marketing Day: Facebook, Baidu & Yelp Earnings, Google Play Ads & Yahoo LiveText

Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Facebook Beats Estimates With $4.04 Billion, Mobile Nearing 80 Percent

Facebook announced second quarter earnings this afternoon. The company posted revenues of $4.04 billion and beat analyst consensus revenue estimates for the quarter by about $50 million. Earnings per share also beat estimates but relatively narrowly. The bulk of quarterly revenue came from...

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Caesars bid to appeal judge's ruling denied

The bankruptcy judge overseeing the reorganization of Caesars Entertainment's largest division said Wednesday the company could not pursue a fast appeal to his ruling that allows bondholder lawsuits to proceed.

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ESSA Bancorp acquires Eagle National Bancorp, expands into southeastern Pa.

Stroudsburg headquartered bank just got bigger

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Yahoo Introduces Livetext, A Silent Video Messaging App

Yahoo joins crowded mobile messaging space with Snapchat-like chat app for iOS and Android devices.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Money Management for Freelancers: How to Budget on an Irregular Income

As a freelance writer, I have a good idea of how much money I’ll bring in every month — but my estimate is rarely perfect.

Sometimes I don’t get as many assignments as I had hoped for, and sometimes clients are slow to pay invoices. There are also months where I earn much more than I had  expected, and my bank account is temporarily flush with cash.

I catalog assignments completed and money earned publicly, through monthly income reports at The Write Life. But what I don’t often dig into is how I manage to budget on an irregular income.

I’ve been freelancing since 2012, so I know a lot about how to handle the irregular cash flow that comes with the freelance life. Instead of getting a paycheck every two weeks, some clients pay every month, some clients pay every week and some clients pay 30 days after an article is published — which can be three or four months from the date of article submission!

Here are the tips I’ve developed to help me survive life on an irregular income.

1. Know Your Monthly Overhead Cost

The most important thing you can do as a freelancer — or as any person with an irregular income — is to know your monthly personal overhead cost.

This is the money it takes to pay your rent, pay your bills and buy essential items like food and medication. If you have other essential costs such as car payments or daycare, include them in your overhead as well. Leave out money for clothes, entertainment and other non-essentials.

My monthly overhead cost is $1,500. This is the amount of money it takes for me to get from one month to the next and pay the bills, keep a roof over my head and put food on the table.

If you have irregular income, you must always bring in more than your monthly overhead cost. Every single month, even the lean ones.

If you’re not bringing in more than your monthly overhead, you need to focus on earning more money — and luckily you’re on the right site for that!

2. Know When You Usually Get Paid

Now that you know your monthly overhead cost, it’s time to figure out when you usually get paid.

If you’ve been working with freelance clients for a while, you’ve probably figured out their payment patterns. I have one client that pays me every week, and the rest of my clients tend to pay around the 15th of the month or the end of the month.

Even though the amounts in these payments vary, I can expect a little bit of money to come in every week and two big chunks of money to arrive around the 15th and the 30th.

Knowing when you usually get paid helps you plan how to stretch your money until your next big payday, which brings me to my next tip.

3. Know How Long Your Income Needs to Last

I have absolutely made the mistake of getting a big freelance check and spending it right away. Now, I tell myself “this money has to last until the 15th of next month,” or whenever my next big freelance payday is.

Knowing how long my income needs to last keeps me from spending it all at once, and it also helps me to make sure I’ve always got that $1,500 that I’ll need to spend on rent, bills and the rest of my monthly overhead.

Here’s an example of this type of income planning. When I look at my bank account today, I think: “OK, right now I have $941.50 in my account, and I’ve already paid my monthly bills, but $675 of that needs to go towards rent. So that means I really have $266.50.

“I should get another $1,200 by the 30th, and I’ll need to put some of that towards taxes, debt and savings, which will give me roughly $341.50 left to start the next month, and that — in addition to the small payment I’ll receive each week — needs to last until the 15th.”

Notice how I mentioned taxes, debt and savings? That’s an essential part of my budget, so we’ll look at those three categories next.

4. Pay Yourself (and Your Taxes) First

“Pay yourself first” is one of those “eat right and exercise” sayings that sounds simple in theory but is really hard to put into practice. However, it has completely changed the way I interact with my freelance budget — for the better.

If you are a freelancer, you’re probably responsible for some kind of freelance taxes, including quarterly estimated tax payments. My CPA recommended I set aside 20% of my income for freelance taxes, so that’s exactly what I do. At the end of every week, I take 20% of the checks that have arrived that week and put them into a sub-savings account labeled “taxes.”

I also put 20% of my income towards debt repayment. I’m lucky that I’m earning enough to be able to put a full 20% of my income towards debt, and if you’re earning less you might not be able to put as much aside. But making a plan to get out of debt is an important part of your financial health, so figure out what works for you.

Lastly, I put 10% of my income into a savings account. This is the best thing I’ve done for myself as a freelancer. Having that savings buffer helps me feel more secure about my irregular income. If something unexpected happens, whether I lose a big client or need to replace my laptop, I’ll have money I can spend.

Those are my tips for budgeting with an irregular income. What are yours? Everybody budgets a little bit differently, so let’s share our tips and learn more about how to survive — and thrive — with irregular paychecks.

Your Turn: How do you plan ahead when your paychecks aren’t predictable? Share your tips and ask questions!

Nicole Dieker is a freelance writer focusing on personal finance and personal stories. Her work has appeared in The Billfold, The Toast, Yearbook Office, The Write Life and Boing Boing.

The post Money Management for Freelancers: How to Budget on an Irregular Income appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Kroger pulls four spices from shelves due to salmonella risk

A positive test for salmonella has caused Kroger to recall four of its seasonings. The grocery store chain is recalling Kroger Ground Cinnamon, Kroger Garlic Power, Kroger Coarse Ground Black Pepper and Kroger Bac'n Buds.

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Search Ads In Google Play Store Go Live Globally

Also announced: "Android first app opens" conversion tracking and impending roll-out of Universal App Campaigns.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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U.S. News Twitter Chat: The Ultimate Back-to-School Shopping Guide

Get expert tips on finding the best deals before you shop.

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5 Reasons Not to Retire Early

Even if you have enough money, there are other reasons to delay retirement.

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Trade Shows Deliver ROI for BKA Content

BKA Content offers high-quality writing services for enterprise companies, small/medium businesses and SEO/Marketing agencies. It specializes in creating all kinds of content, including product descriptions, category pages, blog posts, press releases, social media posts, web pages, and SEO content....

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Hoarding Pennies: 8 Ways to Make the Most of the Coins in Your Change Jar

When I worked as a waitress, I would come home after work every night and toss my spare coins into a big jar.

I didn’t think much about the jar until my friends suggested we go away for the weekend. I was kind of broke, but I didn’t want to say no, so I decided to dig into my change jar.

It turned out I had more than $300 squirreled away — enough for my share of a weekend road trip!

I still have a change jar, but I try not to let it build up so much before doing something with the money. After all, leaving hundreds of dollars sitting around your house is not a good investment strategy!

If you’re anything like me, you also toss your loose coins into a container every few days. Your cash isn’t worth much to you sitting in the corner! Instead, here’s what to do with that spare change.

1. Cash It In at a Coinstar Machine

Coinstar machines allow you to exchange your change for cash, gift cards or charitable donations.

Changing coins into bills at a Coinstar machine is not a great option, because they charge a 10.9% service fee. However, if you redeem for a charitable donation or gift card, the fee is waived.

Redeeming your change for a gift card to a store you frequent is basically like getting cash, and you can choose from companies like Amazon, Starbucks, iTunes, Toys R Us, Forever 21, and lots more.

Your charity options depend on the kiosk you use, but some of my favorite ones are the World Wildlife Fund and the Humane Society of the United States.

2. Use It

Stock a change purse and carry it with you. When you pay cash at a store, use exact change.

Having change on you can also come in handy if you need to pay a parking meter or get an emergency snack out of a vending machine.

If you didn’t have change on you, you might end up having to ask someone to break a dollar or two for you. Why do that when you have a jar full of change just sitting in your house?

3. Roll It Up and Cash It In at the Bank

This is the most traditional solution for dealing with your change.

It’s a great activity for kids, who can practice coin identification, counting, math and sorting. If you have older kids, you could even promise them 10% of the money you get from cashing in your coins. They’ll have a great time calculating their earnings!

Many banks still give away the papers you need for rolling coins — just ask the teller. If your local bank won’t give you coin-rolling papers, you can buy them cheaply online.

4. Deposit It at the Bank

Some banks will allow you to deposit unrolled coins into your account, even if you haven’t gone to the trouble of rolling them first. This can be a big timesaver!

To avoid the annoyance of getting turned away after hauling in all your coins, call ahead to make sure your bank offers this service.

Whether you roll your coins or simply deposit them, getting them into your bank account helps your money to earn interest. Your coins weren’t doing you any good sitting in your house, so at least they’re earning a small amount of interest in your savings account.

5. Designate It All for One Purpose

Instead of just depositing your change into your savings or checking account, deposit all of your change into your retirement fund or your child’s college savings account.

It may not seem like much, but these little contributions can add up over time. Plus, your college or retirement fund may have higher interest rates than your savings or checking account, and this helps you maximize your return on your coins.

6. Turn It Into a Game

For example, you and your spouse could designate one day a year as Coin Day. On that day, you count up all the change that you’ve accumulated over the year and use the total to treat yourselves to a date.

The catch: You have to agree not to spend anything except what you’ve accumulated in the change jar.

If you’ve had a year with lots of change, you might be in for a nice dinner and a movie. But if it’s been a year with only a little change, you might be treating yourselves to dinner off the dollar menu!

7. Get creative!

Pinterest has some amazing suggestions for upcycling coins. My favorite examples were using pennies to create a shiny copper table top or this fancy tray, and creating this pretty necklace or a simple bracelet.

8. Look for Collectible Coins

Also known as “coin roll hunting,” this can also be a great activity to share with kids, especially if you call it “treasure hunting!”

Try combining coin roll hunting with most of these other ideas. Whether you’re taking your coins to the bank, repurposing them to finish a table or spending them, sort through them first to make sure you’re not getting rid of a coin worth more than its face value. For example, half dollars minted before 1965 can sell for more than $7 each!

Whatever you do with your coins, don’t let them sit in the corner of your house collecting dust. Put them to work, whether it’s earning interest, buying back-to-school supplies or simply decorating your house.

Your Turn: What do you do with the coins in your change jar? Share your strategies in the comments!

Disclosure: We have a serious Taco Bell addiction around here. The affiliate links in this post help us order off the dollar menu. Thanks for your support!

Crystal Koenig has learned lots of strategies for saving money while living on a graduate student income. She has previously blogged at Crystal and Bryan in Singapore.

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Analysts say MGM may look at selling The Mirage

Two Wall Street analysts said in research notes Wednesday that MGM Resorts International may be considering selling The Mirage to focus on other development aspects for the Strip casino giant.

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5 Ways to Increase Pageviews Per Visitor by 23.52%

Why are you spending all this time and effort to get visitors to your website only to let them leave after the first or second page they see?

It’s much cheaper to get a visitor already on your site to go to another page than it is to attract a new visitor to that page.

Guess what? It’s more valuable too. If a visitor is checking out several pages, chances are they like you. Each post or page they read will increase brand recognition and trust, which will lead to conversions down the line.

If I told you that you could double, triple…or even quadruple the average number of pages viewed by a visitor, wouldn’t you be interested?

Assuming you haven’t spend a ton of time optimizing your user experience (UX), you can see crazy results from a bit of work.

This post is going to show you the 5 most effective ways to improve your UX, which will lead to an instant boost in page views. 

User experience is not art—it’s science

The thing that prevents website owners from UX optimization is that it sounds like a complicated thing.

It’s something that you might think that only developers understand.

But in reality, it’s pretty simple and requires no specialized knowledge. Sure, getting experience will help you see results faster in the future, but anyone can start improving the UX of their visitors.

First off, what exactly is user experience?

It’s a broad term, which can lead to confusion. The user experience encompasses all parts of how your website’s content affects someone’s visit. It’s best summed up in the Morville honeycomb:

There are 7 distinct keys to a good user experience:

1. Useful – your content must accomplish something.
2. Useable – content should be practical, and tools must work as intended.
3. Desirable – users need to actually want what you’re offering.
4. Findable – not only should your original content be findable but your other content should be easily findable as well (good navigation).
5. Accessible – if visitors can’t access your content (pop-ups, overlays, poor loading, etc.), they won’t have a good experience.
6. Credible – a user can only have a great experience if they trust what they’re reading/using.
7. Valuable – your website must accomplish something that people value (essentially an extension of useful).

The 5 ways of improving UX I’m about to show you fall into one of these 7 categories.

A final important thing you need to know is that user experience is unique to each individual.

Sometimes, two sites can make the same change, and the UX on one site will improve but get worse on the other. It depends on your visitors.

What that means for you is that even if you agree with something I show you in this post, test it on your website to see if it’s actually going to be a positive change.

The UX is not an opinion. It should be backed by data from real users.

1. Links are not just for SEO—they’re for users

Too often, site owners make the mistake of making changes and marketing decisions based on how they think search engines will react.

I’ve been guilty of this in the past. Almost everyone has.

When you put a link in an article, it shouldn’t be just because you read that Google rewards content that links out to authority sites. Instead, it should be because it adds value for your visitor.

Have you seen how much I link in my posts on Quick Sprout and NeilPatel.com?

Of course, it depends on the topic, but typically I have a minimum of 20 links per post. This works out to at least one link per 200 words, but often more.

Why are links good for UX?

• Links can answer questions: if it’s a really common question, you might write a paragraph on it. But if you think only a minority of your readers might ask it, you can include a link just for them.
• Links logically lead readers to the next step: when you write something, you must pick a scope (what you’re going to cover). Even if there’s a related topic that’s really interesting, you might not have the space to cover it. Instead, a link can connect the reader to another article, giving them the chance to continue exploring the topic.
• Links build trust: remember those 7 factors of UX? Credibility was one of them. Links to sources and resources in a data-driven post make readers feel more confident about the information you are providing.

If you include the right links, you can let users customize their own experience, which is always a positive thing.

There’s one more thing we need to talk about…

Should you include internal links or external links: I’ll make this as simple as possible. Always link to the most valuable resource for your visitors, whether it’s on your site or someone else’s.

Note that other articles on your site often hold the most value if they are highly relevant because the reader is already familiar with your work and likes it enough to read the current article.

Internal links have the obvious benefit of increasing the number of pages a visitor will see on your site. A new site won’t have much valuable content to link to, but a site that’s been creating content for years (e.g., Quick Sprout) will have tons of related content that can be linked to in each post.

External links, as I mentioned earlier, might help you appear more trusted to search engines. That’s a small potential benefit.

The real benefit is that if you link to a great resource, your visitor will associate that with you (you just did them a favor). This leads to more trust and more loyal readers. This is why it might not be the best strategy to link to the first resource you find on Google. Dig a bit deeper to find something really valuable.

Finally, remember that each separate link won’t be clicked very frequently (usually 1-10%). But all of those links add up. If you added 10 extra internal links to a post, you’ll likely get an extra 10-20% pageviews on average from a visitor.

That’s a big difference. Imagine going from your regular 10,000 page views per month to 11,000 or 12,000, just from one simple change.

2. Some of your visitors are turtles

My super long posts (5,000 words or so) typically have a ton of pictures.

I include images for a variety of reasons, but mainly to break up content to make it more readable.

I’m only able to do this because most of my blog visitors use a desktop/laptop. Think about it: who has the time to read 5,000 words on a phone’s screen?

The reason I mention this is because mobile and desktop browsing differ not only in screen size but in speed.

Most people using computers can download a few hundred kilobytes or even a few megabytes in less than a second.

The same can’t be said about mobile phones. A survey found that mobile connection speeds ranged from 0.6 Mbps to 9.5 Mbps. Clearly, some mobile users will be able to load your site quickly, but many won’t.

Most phone users accept that their Internet browsing will be a bit slower than normal, but not as much as you might think.

A reported 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in under 2 seconds. But those are desktop users.

Phone users expect pages to load in under 4 seconds, so there’s a bit more leeway. But the average site loads in 9 seconds on mobile, which isn’t even close to good enough.

The real reason this is a problem is that a slow loading page isn’t just annoying—it will turn visitors away from your content. Forty percent of visitors will leave your site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load (on desktops). You can extrapolate that to 6 seconds for mobile users, which still is less than the average speed of a mobile site.

The problem with page speed tests: Many website owners have already tested their websites for page speed and found no problems. Unfortunately, there’s a flaw with the average page speed tester.

By default, almost all popular page load speed tests (e.g., GTmetrix, Pingdom) use an unthrottle connection. What this does is take connection speed out of the equation and looks solely at the technical side.

Now, that’s important. That’s how you see if you have any major speed issues. The problem is that the page load time you get with such tests only represents a fraction of your users (even if it’s a fairly big chunk).

Consider this: I tested Quick Sprout on GTmetrix with the standard default settings. It passed with flying colors and had a 1.5 second loading time—nice.

What you can also do is create a free account and then change the connection speed to 3G, which is what a large portion of mobile users are still stuck on (57% of users).

When I run Quick Sprout through the test again, I get a very different loading speed: 3.3 seconds.

In this case, my page load time more than doubled, and that’s on a pretty simple page.

If you run this test for other pages, you will often see the load times more than double. This means that narrowly beating that original 2 second limit is not enough.

I’m not going to write a full guide to page speed optimization here, but I will address the most efficient ways to optimize your site for mobile users.

Factor #1 – HTTP requests: One of the main metrics that any page speed tester will show you is the number of HTTP requests made.

An HTTP request is made to get the information for each script, image, CSS file, etc. within the HTML. Each request takes time to process. About 78% of time is spent making HTTP requests when loading a page.

You can speed up your sites by reducing the number of HTTP requests that a browser needs to make.

How do you do this?

The easiest ways is to consolidate CSS files and images as much as possible. It’s not uncommon for a poorly-optimized WordPress theme to have three or more CSS files requested together on the same page. Copy all the CSS files into a single file, and edit out any references to the now deleted files.

Most sites also have the ability to decrease the number of requests by creating CSS sprites. Sprites are image files that contain multiple images inside them. The CSS code tells the browser which image is located where.

Sprites should be made for all images that are called on every page such as navigation images or logos.

To make this easy, use a tool such as Spritepad. Simply drag and drop your images onto the canvas provided. The CSS with location details will be created automatically.

When you’ve added all your common images, you can download your CSS sprite (at the top) and then call that in your pages instead of multiple separate images.

The above were two quick ways to get rid of several HTTP requests on most websites, but there’s more to it than that. Here’s a slightly more thorough guide for more information.

Factor #2 – Page size: The other main metric measured with a speed tool is the size of the page in bytes. Ideally, your page shouldn’t be more than a few hundred kilobytes (sometimes it’s unavoidable to go over).

If you’re having big page speed issues, you may have to reduce the number of images you use, but there are a few things you can do before then.

First, compress your images. Most image files have useless metadata attached that take up a lot of space. Use a tool like Optimizilla or a WordPress plugin like WP Smush to reduce file size.

Second, use HTTP compression to compress the size of files as they are transferred. The most common form of HTTP compression is GZIP. To use GZIP compression in WordPress, check the GZIP option in the W3 Total Cache plugin.

Finally, simplify your site as much as possible. Don’t include an excessive sidebar or tons of images in your header. Stick to simple text and HTML as much as possible.

Factor #3 – Hosting and delivery: Even if you do all that technical stuff right, visitors may not be able to load your pages fast if your hosting and delivery sucks.

The hosting part is pretty simple. If you’re paying $5 per month for a shared plan, your site is never going to be very fast. Unless you are just getting started, get on a serious hosting server that is dedicated to your site.

Secondly, I also recommend using a content delivery network (CDN) for static files such as images. This will cost you more, but your website will grow faster, and visitors will convert better, which is worth it. Here’s a guide to choosing a good CDN.

Bonus Tip – trick your users into being more satisfied by dialing up the relevance: When residents in a building complained that waiting times for elevators were excessively long, instead of speeding up the elevators, the building owners gave the residents something that could occupy their time while waiting. The building manager installed mirrors so that the residents could look at themselves while waiting, and the complaints stopped.

While it’s not a perfect analogy, waiting for a page to load could be as frustrating and boring as waiting for an elevator to arrive. Visitors realize that they are sacrificing their time for content. The more they enjoy your content, the less they will mind waiting. I suspect that a large portion of my readers like you would wait longer than 2 seconds for a new blog post to load.

“If users cannot find what they want on a website, they will regard the download time as slower than it actually might be. Conversely, if users do find what they want on a website quickly and easily, they perceive the download time as faster than it actually might be. I have observed these perceptions, consistently, during usability testing for over 10 years.” – Shari Thurow

What does this mean for your site?

It means that including a table of contents to help your visitors find the answers they’re looking for, writing a highly relevant meta description, and highlighting important parts of your post can make your readers feel that it was worth their time to wait for the page to load.

A happy reader is much more likely to click on other links to posts on your site than a frustrated reader.

3. Your message comes first, so eliminate distractions

Your message needs to be front and center, whether it’s on a landing page or a blog post.

It’s what your visitors are there to read. This falls under multiple UX categories but mostly accessibility.

If you make content easily accessible, readers will continue to read. If you make it difficult, many will either leave right away or not be excited to visit another page on your site.

Although sites vary in their designs, there are 3 common sources of distractions that most site have that should be eliminated.

Here’s how to fix them…

Tactic #1 – Minimize or eliminate the sidebar: The sidebar is a neglected element on most blogs. You need to put a lot of thought into what you put into your sidebar, or if you even need one at all.

Medium is currently one of the most popular blogging platforms, renowned for being highly readable. There is no sidebar on a Medium post—just content:

The no-sidebar layout has zero distraction, so the reader focuses solely on the post.

Others using this layout have been able to increase not only their page views but also their conversion rates by 26-71%.

This can be a good thing, but sometimes you do want to show your readers certain elements of your site every time they visit it even if it might distract them a bit.

If you do continue to use a sidebar, only include the most important information in it such as:

• opt-in
• bio
• links to top posts
• links to products/service

That’s what I do on my blogs:

Notice, I don’t have anything flashy in my sidebar. Readers know it’s there, but they can focus on the post content if they aren’t interested in the sidebar information.

Tactic #2 – Think about dropping scrolling elements: This is a tricky one. Having parts of your page that are fixed and scroll down as the user scrolls down can improve conversion rates. But if you go overboard, it will have a negative effect on UX.

You need to test any scrolling element you add. Compare before and after metrics for time on page and pages per visitor to see if it’s worth it.

I use some scrolling elements, but not a lot. See how the top menu scrolls down with the page on NeilPatel.com:

Alternatively, I have the thin Hello Bar on Quick Sprout.

Notice that in both cases the elements aren’t highly distracting and only take up a small part of the screen.

But when you start adding a scrolling header, a footer, and social sharing buttons or a sidebar, it can get busy fast. A page like this will turn off many readers, no matter how great the content is:

Tactic #3 – Delay or get rid of pop-ups: Another sensitive subject—pop-ups—are great for improving your email opt-in conversion rate. But they also annoy users, which can lead to a lower number of pages per visitor.

I’ve tried using pop-ups on Quick Sprout in the past and have gotten good results from a conversion standpoint:

If you’re going to use pop-ups, limit the detrimental effect that they have on your UX.

Don’t have them pop up as the page loads because that’s a sure way to scare off visitors. Instead, wait at least 10 seconds—60 seconds might be better.

The longer you wait before showing your pop-up, the less annoying it is. If a reader has already been reading for 30 seconds to a minute, asking them to close a simple box isn’t too much.

4. Consistency is more important than creativity

In order to be credible, your brand must be consistent.

In order to be usable, your layout and content must be consistent.

When a visitor returns at least a few times to your site, they should know what to expect. If they want to find blog posts, they should be easy to find. If they want to hire you, same thing: getting in touch with you should be easy.

There are two main factors to consider when it comes to consistency and UX.

Factor #1 – Branding and symbols: Your brand is defined by many different things but mainly by your logo and symbols.

When I talk about symbols, I’m talking about things like Google’s hamburger menu:

This symbol indicates a menu with settings in it across Google products, including Chrome and almost all Android applications. When a Google user is looking for settings, they look for that hamburger menu.

Whatever your product is, you should use the same symbols and terms across all forms of communication: your blog, landing pages, emails, and in the product itself.

Take a look at the branding on Quick Sprout. You start to recognize the logo and color scheme after a while:

If you go to a landing page, you see the exact same logo and color scheme:

But imagine if you went from the Quick Sprout blog to a landing page that had a different logo and different color scheme. You’d feel there’s something wrong here and likely close the page—credibility lost.

All your blog posts and site content should look like they belong together.

Finally, you can make it even clearer for your readers if use icons and symbols relevant to their function.

Icons might stand alone or be incorporated into a picture/link.

For example, if you’re linking to a tool like Quick Sprout in the sidebar, you could include a magnifying glass.

Or, if your blog excerpts say “read more,” like many do, you can include an arrow right after, indicating that there is more to come.

Factor #2 – Style: Style does include a color scheme, but it is more than that. You also need to think about font type, font size, layout, writing tone, etc.

Someone who maintains a consistent style really well is Bernadette Jiwa, a copywriter. She formats her posts the same way she formats her emails (post below):

The emails have the same colored links, same text size, and same font:

Being consistent helps your readers know what to expect, which improves their UX, no matter the platform.

If you’re on my email list for any of my blogs, I bet you’ve noticed something about my emails: they’re all laid out exactly the same.

There’s a link with the anchor text “the latest (site) post” in the opening line.

After that, there’s a standalone link to the post with the title of the post as the anchor text.

Finally, I give you a quick introduction to the post plus another call to action to go read the post.

After a few emails, you’ll pick up on this pattern and know what to expect. This is good for me and you. It’s good for you because you know exactly what to expect and how to get to the content if you want it. It’s good for me because I know that you know (stay with me) that you can get to the new post from any of those links.

What would happen if in some emails I’d include only the first link and in others only the last link? You wouldn’t know what to expect. Sure, a large portion of the readers would still find the link, but others would scroll right by the first one at the top or not see the last one at the bottom.

5. Make important elements BIG

No, I’m not just talking about making opt-ins huge. When say “BIG,” I’m talking about visibility.

In order for content to be as useable as possible, readers need to be able to identify the most important parts easily.

Here’s what I mean: look at any site with a great UX, and there will always be a focal point on any page:

In this case, it’s an email opt-in box. Although there’s a large picture and menu options, color and size have been used to make the opt-in box stand out.

Here’s another example:

Unbounce made their sign-up buttons highly visible.

Both of these examples show the power of contrast.

If you want something to stand out from the rest of your web page, give it a drastically different color—it will get attention.

But making things more visible is important for other goals, not just email sign-ups or account creation.

Consider links within your content. These should be really easy to see and easy to click (use).

Some sites hide their links in grey or don’t underline them, thinking that readers will click on the links and never come back. You and I both know that if your content is great, your readers will always come back. Plus, there’s the other benefits discussed in the first section of this article.

On NeilPatel.com, for example, links are displayed as a bright and highly visible orange text. In addition, I use a fairly large text size. Even on mobile devices, links are easily visible and clickable:

Considering that many of these links lead to other pages on the site, it’s a good thing when visitors are interested in them, so why wouldn’t you want to highlight them?

My orange links are another example of using contrast, just for a different purpose.

You can also make elements stand out by emphasizing them. This can be done by separating them from other elements (add more white space), using a unique font, or using bold or italic effects.

For example, Brian Dean at Backlinko uses a special yellow box to highlight his content upgrades. Plus, he bolds first few words to make them stand out:

Being able to quickly identify what a user is looking for is a key part of usability. I recommend trying to get some new visitors to your site and tracking their mouse movement with software like Crazy Egg.

By looking at where most of your readers’ attention goes, you can see what naturally stands out to them when they visit a page. Then, you can adjust your elements and test the difference until you achieve the desired effect, e.g., directing your visitors to an opt-in, link, or specific content.

Conclusion

For all the time you spend building traffic, you owe it to yourself to spend more time optimizing the user experience.

If you implement at least a few of the methods in this post, you should be able to raise your pageviews by a large chunk.

If you currently get 10,000 monthly pageviews, what do you think is easier: to get an extra 3,000 visitors or increase the number of pages that an average user visits by 30%?

In most cases, the second option is way easier.

Keep in mind, however, that optimizing UX is not an overnight process. Remember that you need to split test any changes you make and make iterative improvements until you’re giving your visitor exactly what they’re looking for.

I challenge you to continuously think of, test, and evolve your website’s UX as your brand grows.

If you have any questions or can share results from a UX experiment, please leave me a comment below.

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5 Apps to Keep Your Cellphone Safe From Security Threats

Protect yourself when making payments and accessing personal information on your phone.

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Ad Blocking: A Binary Solution To A Complex Problem

Blocking ads is akin to stealing music or movies, argues columnist Rob Rasko, but the only way that publishers can fight back is to make their content better.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Is the UK going to legalise marijuana?

A PETITION calling for legalisation of marijuana aims to force a parliamentary debate in the UK. And the idea has some surprising supporters.

Source NEWS.com.au | Business http://ift.tt/1KymcdU

How to Avoid Getting Cut by the Cutting Edge

Photo: Faris Algosaibi

When I graduated from college in 2002, smartphones were just beginning to become popular. There were several different types floating around out there, most with LCD screens that enabled you to check your email and send text messages, both of which were beyond the capacity of the “dumb” phones at the time.

I immediately got a job in a research lab that involved managing lots of data and organizing it for sharing and distribution. From an intellectual standpoint, it was a wonderful job and it paid quite well – my starting salary was more than what my father was making, and my father had reached a pretty stable point late in his career.

It wasn’t long before I joined up with a group of young professionals who all graduated within a few years of myself, all of whom found technology-related jobs in the same city. We started going out together sometimes after work, particularly starting in the fall of 2003.

While there were some big positives from those years, including a lot of camaraderie and some great sharing of resources and ideas, there was one big problem. The group had a huge amount of oneupmanship.

There seemed to constantly be a contest of sorts that compared how people dressed (a contest that I usually didn’t win, honestly), what car people drove, what restaurants people had been to, and, by mid-2004, what smartphone they were holding in their pocket.

Most of the people gravitated quickly to various BlackBerry models. Several people in the group started off with the older LCD models of BlackBerrys, but with each little technological improvement or new feature, someone picked up the latest model. It quickly turned into an arms race of sorts. Someone got a color BlackBerry. Someone got one with a better form factor. Someone else got one with a much better color screen. And so on. And so on. And so on.

There was always lots of talk about how “productive” these phones made people, but the truth often was that such talk was overblown. Much as with today, the truly useful features of these phones were features found in other, much cheaper phones.

Sometimes, the phone would have some great new feature, but that feature either wouldn’t amount to anything genuinely productive or it would be so buggy as to be useless and wouldn’t work well until a phone update in the future.

Anyway, the end result was that there was a lot of motivation to buy the absolute latest smartphone right when it came out, so that I could have the “latest” device. And, at least twice, I managed to do just that. I picked up two different smartphone models on the day they hit – one was a BlackBerry and one was a Palm model.

On those days, and for the next few days, I got a lot of attention for that model, and that was certainly fun, but it didn’t take long for someone else to have something “better” and for the newness to wear off.

What came next? Honestly, I didn’t wind up doing much of anything with those devices that I could not have done with less expensive phones. The “hot new” features were either irrelevant or really buggy. The web browsing capacity was basically unusable on those phones, though it was often lauded and bragged about. Sending emails on those phones was drudgery. In all honesty, I basically wound up doing just the most obvious things with it – sending texts and making phone calls. It was an overpriced “dumb phone” with a few gee-whiz features I used once a month or so.

I should have expected that, because there’s one fundamental truth I’ve learned about buying new technology. You can call it “Trent’s Law of Tech Spending,” if you’d like:

The first release of a new technology device is almost always flawed, and the update to fix that flaw won’t come for at least a few months.

Almost every device you can think of had an ignoble first release. It wasn’t until the second or third version of the item that the device really became useful. Almost every technology innovation I can think of had this kind of cycle. The first version was cool, and you could see the potential, but there were big flaws that hindered the usefulness at first.

I played with the original iPhone, for example. It was very cool… but it couldn’t do much. The potential was there, but it was really yet to come.

There’s an extension to “Trent’s Law of Tech Spending,” too:

The first time a new feature pops up in a device, it won’t work nearly as well as you think.

Why? Because features are almost always sold on potential, not on reality. The ads show you a perfect test case for the feature, but when you actually use it in the real world, it doesn’t work like that. It might eventually work like that, but that won’t happen until a later update or a later version.

What makes all of this even more challenging is that the first release of a new device or a new feature is usually really expensive. Second and third generation versions of the same item often combine a price decline along with better and more useable features.

So, let’s roll forward to today. I own a smartphone that’s about three generations “old,” yet it does everything I want it to do and never has any trouble. I have a Kindle that’s… five (?) generations old, yet it does everything I want it to do and never has any trouble. The same thing goes for my tablet.

None of those items were bought as the first version of that product. All of them are third generation or later. None of them were bought anywhere near the day of release. Instead, I waited for patches and fixes to be released before I bought in. Because I waited, I paid significantly less for those items than I would have otherwise.

The best part? I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on a single thing because of this approach. I’m sure if I hunted around I could find a minor feature or two that I would find useful, but the reality is that I don’t miss any of that stuff in my day-to-day life.

The tech items I have work well and do what I need them to do. They’re stable and reliable (as much as such devices can be) and I paid a reasonably low price for them.

I don’t tend to own the hottest new thing any more. Instead, I wait around for it to mature a bit so that the prices drop and it becomes clear which features actually work well and which ones are actually useful and robust. That’s the basis I use for purchasing decisions.

The only thing I missed in this entire process is the feeling of being on the “cutting edge.” I don’t really get to be the guy with the “hot new gadget” any more.

The interesting part about that? I don’t really care. I don’t care what most people think of me on a day-to-day basis. No one that I care about is going to be really impressed by the fact that I have the hottest new gadget. It’s not going to win friends. It’s not going to build better social connections. It’s not going to make the friends I already have like me or respect me more.

It’s just going to be a device that I use for my own needs, and having the latest and greatest device usually just backfires on me in a number of ways.

The next time you’re thinking about spending your hard-earned money on the hottest tech device, keep a few things in mind:

• It won’t win you any friends or make people impressed with you.
• The features you see are largely duplicated by something else that costs a lot less.
• The “new” features are often first-generation ones, which means they’re likely to be buggy and won’t work well until a later update.
• It’s going to also come with that “new” item price premium, which means you’ll spend more now for something that will go down in price in the near future.

In short, being on the cutting edge is rarely worth it. Leave that to the people who write about technology (and usually receive review copies of the products for free). Instead, wait until it matures a little bit and the price comes down. Not only will you skip over many of the flaws of that first generation, you’ll also save money by doing so.

The post How to Avoid Getting Cut by the Cutting Edge appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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