Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 29 August 2014

Great con­tent found by Pariah and shared to the design and cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties on social media.

  • Confused with data analy­sis? The noob’s guide to cre­at­ing con­ver­sion funnels

    You’ve prob­a­bly been read­ing tons of arti­cles telling you to start set­ting up met­rics for your web­site, mea­sure your web­site KPIs and take data-driven deci­sions. If you’ve already begun set­ting up met­rics and track­ing events on your web­site you prob­a­bly know that it’s not easy.

    We spent quite a bit of time get­ting it right. In this arti­cle we’ll try to explain what you should be mea­sur­ing, how to mea­sure it and what types of tools you can use to mea­sure them. This is in no way a defin­i­tive guide but more a jour­ney of what we did.

  • The Wide World of Cloud Computing

    Cloud com­put­ing is the new buzz­word phras­ing that seems to be pop­ping up in every business/IT mod­el these days. Because of this, com­pa­nies are begin­ning to make the “alter­na­tive direc­tion” of cloud com­put­ing into the con­ven­tion­al choice of how to run their IT and com­put­ing system.

  • Latest ABC report gives snap­shot of progress of UK mag­a­zines in grow­ing dig­i­tal edi­tion circulation
    Thanks to the UK media web­site PressGazette, I was able to look at the cir­cu­la­tion fig­ures in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent way than many would. I was far less inter­est­ed in growth or declines of read­er­ship and looked only at those titles report­ing digi…
  • Here’s why the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of big data real­ly, real­ly should excite you. Yes … you

    In the not-so-distant past, if you want­ed to query huge data sets, you need­ed autho­rized access to the big iron of super­com­put­ers. The era of big data and pub­lic cloud has changed all that and hat’s a great thing, says Yahoo Fellow Kalev Leetaru.

  • What To Do With Spare Ideas

    We all get tons of new ideas con­stant­ly as design­ers. Which is awe­some – don’t get me wrong – but some­times we get way more ideas than we can actu­al­ly get to in one sit­ting. Or even in one life­time. Often, design­ers sim­ply jot down those excess ideas in a note­book and file them away some­where, but that’s bor­ing and unhelp­ful. The truth is, there are far bet­ter ways to deal with your spare ideas. Here are some sug­ges­tions on what to do with them.

  • 3 tools to help pro­tect your brand while retargeting
    This has led to a lot of adver­tis­ers going to exter­nal providers for their retar­get­ing. There are three key tools that your retar­get­ing provider should have so that you can enjoy the ben­e­fits of retar­get­ing with­out sac­ri­fic­ing brand image or pe…
  • Selling The Value Of The Web To Small-Town Clients
    Selling your ser­vices as a free­lancer or a small shop is tough enough as it is. Selling to a small-town busi­ness that might not even see the need for a web­site adds an extra lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty in turn­ing a profit.
  • At last: Dropbox shows vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to rivals’ price cuts, offers 1 TB for $9.99/month

    Even as Google and Microsoft were chop­ping prices on their consumer-oriented file share and stor­age prod­ucts, Dropbox held steady. CEO Drew Houston told con­fer­ence atten­dees a few months back not to expect Dropbox to meet those cuts — the think­ing being that cus­tomers would pay more for Dropbox’s vaunt­ed ease of use, etc., etc.

  • Obvious Design Always Wins

    Things appear obvi­ous when eas­i­ly dis­cov­ered, seen, or under­stood. No sur­pris­es there. What could be more eas­i­ly dis­cov­ered, seen, or under­stood than facts and meth­ods we have already learned? We con­sid­er obvi­ous most of what we know, and we con­sid­er chal­leng­ing what we don’t know. For exam­ple, many peo­ple get frus­trat­ed when teach­ing and if their stu­dents don’t under­stand immediately.

  • 6 Steps to Become a WordPress Professional

    Want to make a liv­ing from WordPress? There are many ways to go about it: design­ing themes, cod­ing plu­g­ins, man­ag­ing all of the back-end details, etc. It’s not the eas­i­est job in the world – it’s espe­cial­ly hard to dis­tin­guish your­self and find poten­tial clients – but if this is the path you want to take, there are some things to keep in mind.