The W³ Awards is the first major web competition to be accessible to the biggest agencies, the smallest firms, and everyone in between. Small firms (us) are as likely to win as Fortune 500 companies and international agencies.

The W³ Awards honors creative excellence on the Web, and recognizes the creative and marketing professionals behind award winning Websites, Web Video and Online Marketing programs. Simply put, the W³ is the first major Web competition to be accessible to the biggest agencies, the smallest firms, and everyone in between. Small firms are as likely to win as Fortune 500 companies and international agencies.

The W3 Awards is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms. Please visit www.iavisarts.org for a full member list and additional information.

AmazingGrass.com features a brand new systems: Auto Ship!  Auto Ship allows customers to sign up to receive recurring orders of products on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis! Customers can choose the frequency, quantity, and shipping address of their recurring Auto Ship order.

Some of the feedback received with the launch of the site:

“I thought the site was visually appealing, user friendly and gave very good information/descriptions of its products which helped convince me that these products would be worth trying out.”

“I would rate it a 9 (out of 10). I really felt the design, functionality and overall professionalism of the site was very good and as I indicated above it did convince me of wanting to look further into these products and try them out. I liked the simplicity of the site – nothing complicated or confusing about it and the descriptions of the products were straightforward and easy to understand benefits etc.

“I like the simplicity, the navigation and set up is great. anyone would be able to find and order from the site and feel taken care off. the ordering is simple and the recurring option is very easy to understand and select. checkout is standard, and simple to view and understand. “

“9 (out of 10) it’s a great working site.”

“It is simple; user friendly, easy to understand and anyone can make an order blindfolded”

“the mechanics of the site are pretty awesome. simple and easy to use”

“Excellent site that is attractive on the eye, quick loading, intuitively navigable, and has enough to interest and inform me about the benefits of consuming healthy green grass.”

With demand at the office growing every day for ‘Grandpa’s greens,’ Brandon and Todd ditched their corporate jobs and started Amazing Grass on a kitchen table in San Francisco.  Now, a decade later, this grassroots company is the leading producer and distributor of organic Green SuperFoods.  For over 60 years, their family farm in Kansas has perfected the growing, harvesting, dehydration and storage of organic alfalfa and cereal grasses – ensuring optimal nutrition in some of the world’s most nutrient dense Green SuperFoods.

Let’s face it: sales make the world go round. But as a Web designer, you’re concerned more with fonts, color, hierarchy and images than with the sales process. Some believe that designs sell themselves; while this may be true for a few designers, it is certainly not the case for most.

How To Sell Your Designs Without The Sales Pitch

Healing Gowns provide a solution for patients seeking to conserve privacy and personal dignity. Traditional hospital gowns are ugly, impersonal, uncomfortable and immodest; they have long been the subject of jokes and embarrassing stories. And you never know who has worn that same gown before you, what their symptoms were or what kind procedure they were undergoing. These ingredients all contribute to the mostly cold impersonalization of patient processing, and certainly makes it more difficult to keep a positive attitude.

Visit HealingGowns.com >>

Yesterday, Google announced the launch of their +1 button, which will allow Google Profile owners to “+1”, or share/save their recommendations including, but not limited to; websites, products, places, recipes, etc… Many see this as an effort to help further Google’s share of social media functionality and interaction, and, obviously, to compete with Facebook’s Like button. What does the +1 button do? It’s quite simple: just like the Facebook Like button, you will have the ability to +1 different Google items, from search engine results, to comparison shopping. This in turn will shape your future Google experience…

Google’s New +1 Button and the Demise of Google

Bradley Copper (Eddie Morra): Well in order for a career to evolve, I am going to have to move on…

Carl Van Loon (Rober De Niro): That you would even think that would only show me how unprepared you are to be on your own. I mean you do know you are freak…your deductive powers are a gift from god, or chance, or a stray shot of sperm, or whatever or whoever the hell wrote your life script-a gift, not earned. You do not know what I know because you did not earn those powers. Your careless with those powers; you flaunt them and you throw them around like a brat with his trust fund; you haven’t had to climb up all the greasy little rungs; you haven’t been board blind at the fund raisers; you haven’t done the time in that first marriage to that girl with the right father-you think you can leap over it all with a single bound. You haven’t had to bribe, or charm, or threaten your way to a seat at that table. You don’t know how to access you competition because you have competed. Don’t make me your competition.

CooksVanilla.com customers will enjoy a freshly designed site with enhanced usability. From easier navigation, to a streamlined checkout system, the new CooksVanilla.com website will continue to break sales records!

Some of the feedback we recevied from independent site review professionals:

“First impression – excellent and professional.”

“First I would like to compliment you on the site. I think your choice of color fits the product and gives the website a nice “flavor”. You site is in almost all aspect easy to navigate. It seems you have found a nice balance between using graphics while not creating a slow loading bad experience.”

“Congrats on a job well done.”

“the site was incredibly clean, professional looking, well thought out and easy to use. In terms of design, I thought it was very aesthetic and pleasant. In terms of functionality, it was incredibly easy to use. I would really give it a 10. It was a great experience.”

“i would give it a 10. the shopping experience was extremely easy and pleasant and the checkout was straight forward w/o any hiccups and very easy to use. i generally do not like checkouts w/ various pages and this one was consolidated into two which was wonderful.”

“The search bar was fantastic.”

“I liked that the look and feel of the site stayed the same the entire time. It was very easy to find products (thanks to the search box), and the checkout process was quick and easy.”

“This site was very good; better than most. I would give it an 8 or 9 out of 10.  “

“With 10 being highest I would rate my experience a 9.”

Cook Flavoring Company is dedicated to the manufacture and distribution of the finest pure extracts and flavorings for the culinary industry. Cook offers superior quality vanilla and other natural flavorings from their plantations in Fiji, Tonga, Costa Rica, and Uganda, and manufacturing facilities in Paso Robles, CA. Benefiting from superior scientific knowledge and lifetimes of experience in vanilla production and manufacturing, Cook Flavoring Company is one of the world’s foremost vanilla manufacturers.

Visit CooksVanilla.com >>

Teeccino features myriad updates and new technology. Specifically; a new product version control system, product and CMS data relationships, link filters, and a unique free sample system.

Caroline MacDougall, the founder of Teeccino, has traveled internationally for over 35 years searching for unique herbal ingredients. In the early 1970s, Caroline began her career as one of the zealous twenty-something year-olds pioneering herbal teas for Celestial Seasonings. Driven by her own caffeine sensitivity, Caroline has specialized in creating naturally caffeine-free herbal beverages that offer all the attributes of coffee or tea.

Visit Teeccino.com >>

Now we are talking dozens of browsers, a handful of operating systems, and a mix of monitor resolutions. So…which configurations should you test your website for? There are two trains of thought here, and you should use a combination of both.

1. Research the general market share
Browse through the various websites that analyze the different user trends to determine what’s most import for you to track. For example, I only verify/test in browsers that have at least 2% market share. This scenario will cover approximately 95-99% of your website visitors. Look through the following sites to learn more about browser, operating systems, resolutions and device usage:

1. Market Share- a leading source of stats, which provides a comprehensive breakdown on all the criteria you need. The data is compiled from approximately 160 million visitors per month.
2. W3Counter – based on the last 15,000 page views to each website tracked by W3Counter. W3Counter’s sample currently includes 33,420 websites.
3. StatCounter- Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 5 billion page views per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. Stats are updated and made available every 4 hours.

When using these sources, remember that they represent a small sample of the entire population of the web. Check out the Usage share of web browsers from Wikipeida for a median average of several top stat providers.

2. Research your own market share
Use Google Analytics, or another on-site analysis tool to learn more about your specific sites visitors. I tend to find that the stats provided by our on-site programs vary some from what the public sites provide. Take the time to analyze who visits your site, and through what hardware/software. Make it a priority to verify the sites on the most popular platforms.

Testing tools
Do you have a testing facility with rows of computers configured with different operating systems, monitors, and browsers? If not, I would highly recommend Browsercam.com for remote desktop testing, screenshot services, and the like. You may also want to try BrowserShots.org which is a free browser capture service. 

Browsercam has browser capture, remote desktop, device capture, and email capture features. This service will help you to test your website in the most popular browsers quickly, accurately, and inexpensively. It is easy to paste in a list of URL’s from your site (home, product, category, etc…) and then activate the testing. In a few hours, you will have all your screenshots, which can be easily filtered and downloaded for offline viewing. 

BrowserShots - a free service that will allow you to take screenshots of a single webpage in different browsers/operating systems. I don’t use this service often, but it seems to have gotten the job done when used.

Make it a rule to test the website thoroughly in the most popular browsers, and take browser captures of the site in less popular configurations for design consistency.