livebooks blog

In 2016, Google announced that it will block all Flash sites within the following two years. The major browsers adopted this change and, although a little saddened by the news, we embraced it because it made perfect sense: as much as we love the Flash websites we’ve designed for our clients for many years, they would soon become obsolete in the dawn of this new update. Such is the advancement of technology.

Another aspect we had to take into consideration was the way browsing has drastically changed since the arrival of mobile devices. When our company began, browsing was done strictly on desktops, thus, functionality and design were created for just one type of screen: your laptop or desktop landscape layout.

The rise of mobile browsing

Let’s go back to 2016 and compare it to the following year. Mobile browsing has increased drastically. This study shows just how much our behavior has changed when it comes to going online. Moreover, Google has taken a clear stand on prioritizing mobile browsing and, furthermore, it will penalize websites that have different content on their two versions – desktop and mobile.

Since Flash isn’t responsive, a new platform was ready to take its place. In our case, we chose HTML5. These are the three main reasons for our decision:

1. Browser cross-compatibility with all major browsers.

You can never tell whether your visitors are avid Google Chrome users, dedicated Safari fans or simply true Internet Explorer believers. With HTML5, your website will work and look the same on them all. Yes, sometimes the colors of your photo content could appear differently on them; we’ve covered this issue in a previous article.

2. It’s optimized for mobile devices.

All your content and SEO will be the same on both versions of your site – desktop and mobile. Some design elements might change to better fit the device used, but your visitors will find all the info they need on your properly structured HTML5 website. In other words, no more horizontal scrolling from your tablet or phone, unless the owner of the website has a reason for it.

3. The code is clean.

Tell this to any developer and watch their eyes sparkle. While this is more of an in-house piece of information, it’s good to know that a clean code runs in the back of your website. This means that any adjustments you would like to see on your website should be done in an easy and error-free manner – this applies for changes made both from the Design Editor as well as any custom code alterations.

What is website migration?

Website migration is the operation of moving all content from one platform to a better one. This includes:

Images
Written content
Links – social and contact links as well as any on or off-site redirects
Image metadata – image info and tags
Website, page, and image SEO – SEO Everything™
Legacy URLs – redirect links from all your old links to your new ones

This is the setting in which we started the migration process of all our sites from Flash to HTML5. In next Tuesday’s article, we will analyze in depth all operations which allow for a smooth transition of content to the HTML5 platform. We will also give a couple of examples of websites we’ve migrated, to observe the improvements in functionality and design.

Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more news about our platform as well as useful tips that will help your website draw more business.

There are many reasons to use PDF files on your site. PDFs can be used for content that you’d like to allows customers to download and/or print. PDFs also provide you with an easier way to display you licences, diplomas or other certificates that set our clients apart from the norm. Don’t forget to keep SEO in mind – check out best practices for optimizing PDFs from the Search Engine Journal.

Here’s an easy guide on how to add PDFs to any liveBooks site:

1. First, you need to upload the PDFs. Go to any page and add a Resource block.

2. Add the PDFs from your computer to the Resource block. This will automatically save them in the Resource Library.

3. Now that your PDFs are uploaded, you must add links to them on your website. Switch to the Design editor and go to the page you’ve been working on. The PDFs will appear all in one column. You can leave them as they are, or you can link them to Buttons, Text or Images.

To link PDFs to your media you will need to:

A. Open the PDF in a new tab and copy its address.

B. Go to your Content editor and add the way you want to link to that PDF. In our example we’ve used a button. Paste the link address in the top field and add a title that will be written on the button. (Note! The default setting opens links in the same tab. We recommend having your links and PDFs open in a separate tab. To enable this just press the button situated at the right end of the link; it will turn blue.)

C. Delete the PDF you’ve linked to the button and preview your page. Depending on the template you’ve chosen, your button may appear differently. Feel free to edit the appearance of your buttons in the Design Editor – Sitewide – Controls – Buttons.

Deleting a PDF from a page will not remove it from the website. To remove a PDF from your website go to your resource library and delete it from there.

Want to see more liveBooks features and how they can help your business grow? Start with a free trial today!

Despite how easy it is to add new galleries or new photographs to existing ones, some websites carry old content and updates get postponed. The major culprit is having no spare time to add new work online. While time may not be on your side, the liveBooks platform is – enter the multi user tool.

The multiple user feature is an excellent tool that enables you to give access to admins and contributors who can make changes to your website as per your requests. They will sign in with their own credentials and you choose what role they will have – some can have full access, while some can only make changes to your website without the ability to publish. This way you can have the last word and choose whether or not to publish those changes.

You can find this feature in your site settings, under Users & Roles. To add a new user, simply click Add User, fill in their email address and set a role for them. Here’s the break-down of the 5 types of users that can be linked to your website.

1. Owner: This is you – the one who pays for the site subscription and the first user who can establish other user roles. It has full access to the dashboard and has the ability to publish.
2. Admin: User has full access to the dashboard and the ability to publish.
3. Content Only: User can access and make changes to the content, but they cannot publish.
4. Design Only: User can access and make changes to the design, but they cannot publish.
5. Contributor – Content and Design: User can access and make changes both in content and design, but they cannot publish.

As you can see, there’s a wide array of roles you can entrust people with to ensure that while your business is prolific, it also shows on your website. Whether you need to keep your portfolios organized, or just need a little spring cleaning now and then, this tool allows you to delegate an assistant while you are out creating new stunning work.

Spring is officially here – the time of year where we can start putting away our winter coats and boots and get excited for warm weather, sunshine, and being outside. Spring is also the time of year that allows us to take inventory of the old, polish it up, sweep it out, and dust it off. This same concept of “spring cleaning”  should apply to your business as well – and most importantly your website. When was the last time you really did an overhaul of your site? If it’s been awhile, now is the perfect time and we’ve compiled a list of things to focus on first to get you started!

Content Clean-Up

Make a conscious effort to do a truly comprehensive content clean up. This can range from something as simple as going through your portfolios and galleries and deleting older photos, adding new work, or moving images around, to actually digging in to your analytics and seeing which pages get the least amount of traffic and editing from there. Website design trends are moving toward cleaner, simplistic, and clutter-free – so really evaluate whether each page of your website is absolutely necessary and providing value to your audience.

Update Your Events Page

One of the things we see all too often is event pages that are far outdated – even by a few years. Take the opportunity to make sure your website is updated with your upcoming workshops, speaking engagements, photo expeditions, or any other important events you’re partaking in. Nothing looks more unprofessional than inaccurate information on your website – plus, this will be a great way to promote the events you care about and hopefully garner more attendees.

Calls to Action

One thing we’ve often noticed that’s missing from photography websites are clear calls to action. While most of the focus should be on your imagery, you also want to make sure you’re telling your audience what you want them to do. Whether that’s booking you for a job, project, ad campaign, or even buying prints, tell them what you’d like them to do and make it easy for them to do it. Having a button on your pages can be an ideal way to lead customers to your end-goal: contacting you!

Update Your Contact Information

If you’ve recently moved your studio or changed your contact phone number, it may be time to look over your contact page. Is your new contact information up-to-date? It can become easy to overlook this simple step, but doing so may cause you to lose a great deal of clients!

Also, try to have your contact information readily available in multiple locations on your website. Customers don’t want to search through countless pages to find your phone number or address. Remember – adding a map to your pages can be an ideal way to attract new customers!

 SEO Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be something you focus on all year ’round, but if it’s not your strong suit definitely take the opportunity now to pay extra attention. If your goal is to increase traffic to your website (which we think it should be!) then make sure your keywords, tags, descriptions, titles, and content on your pages are working for your business. If you’re not ranking as high with search engines as you’d like, it might be time to overhaul your old SEO tactics and start fresh with these tips!

Experiment With New Website Designs

We know that completely changing your website design is a huge undertaking – but small, subtle changes can be made to create a fresh new look without all the stress of a total re-design. Switch up the images on your homepage. Change the names/titles of your portfolios. Add a new page – such as a blog – to your website. All of these changes will keep your website up to date, as well as give returning clients new things to look at and explore.

Want to explore other design templates? Take a look at all of our responsive templates now to begin!

What “spring cleaning” are you conducting on your website? Email us!