Our clients always ask for hints about maintaining their new website (and blog). It's like a new car so how does one keep the paint shining and the inside smelling like a new car. You know, keep it clean, get the oil changed, and rotate the tires! Create a content/editorial schedule and follow it. And if branding, consistency, and the user experience is important, check out the guidelines we've provided.

We've launched another responsive website. We've been using an adaptive responsive approach to web design (RWD) for better than a year now. It is our preferred solution for multi-device support. Each new project before us is approached as an opportunity to experiment and push ourselves to improve our responsive workflow and techniques. Not all RWD sites are created alike—that's for sure. By starting with content on this project, we ensured that all of our website’s content was relevant and appropriate to all users, mobile or otherwise. This project was wireframed and designed in Photoshop for the smartphone and desktop. Tablet considerations, for the better part, were designed in the browser. We celebrate another milestone: best Dirigo RWD site ever.

Here at Dirigo we’re not sure why concern for providing the disabled easy access to website content is so low right now. We run across the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) every day. Buildings have ramps, restrooms have stalls that accommodate wheelchairs, elevators have braille buttons, and televisions have closed-captioning.  As a society, America is quite conscious about the need to accommodate the disabled.  Yet, almost none of the RFP’s that we received over the past 24 months made mention ADA compliance.  Marketers are not thinking about universal access.  That’s because, historically, there was nobody enforcing ADA compliance in the cyber world.  It’s all changing!  Special interest groups are stepping-in to advocate for their members and websites have become the next frontier for ADA litigation. Firms that fail to cater to visitors with disabilities are finding themselves in court defending, and often settling, lawsuits that are costly both monetarily and in terms of damaging publicity. Our advice – build ADA compliance into your projects.

2013 is an exciting year for the web design and development community. Browsers are faster than ever, and mobile phones and tablets are in the hands of more and more people every day. That means more opportunity for web designers and developers to have their content reach a wider audience.

This year we're seeing a few trends cross over from 2010 and up, with some new design and functional pieces evolving.

Hey if Letterman and Carson can have top 10 lists, so can technology companies. Here are our top 20 SEO, SEM, and web best practice tools for keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, keyword rankings, etc.Enjoy!

For the novice who’s never used Google AdWords or Bing Ads, these advertising programs can definitely be a difficult to master, especially when creating a campaign starting from scratch—plus it doesn’t help when AdWords (or Ads) interface changes, and the competitive landscape is ebbing and flowing too (including when a client is being impacted by competitive conquesting, the brand is crowded out, and/or constrains the monthly spend). With the continued challenging economic times, we are seeing greater conquesting activities.

If you can't get access to your Rackspace Quarantine Manager for an email alias, never fear: here's a quick nine steps and you're in!

With just a few resources (likely already at your fingertips), you can increase clicks, foot traffic, and eyeballs to your vehicle inventory. Whether your brand is one rooftop or several, Pinterest is a tool that is driving more clicks, more walk-ins, more calls, and more sold cars. Oh and you gotta get your social house in order, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube too!

Domain tasting ... sounds like it's lunch time. Not! The simple act of going to the Internet—a search engine (like Google or Bing) or Internet registrar (like GoDaddy or Yahoo)—to find a domain name may be quite costly if you don't purchase the domain name immediately. Check out my post that include two favorite safe places to research brands and domains. Happy eating! Good luck with researching!

There are a myriad of design apps to look at for the iPad. These are my favorites. Check them out and let me know what you think.