Every year most popular search engines releases the stats which are the compilation of the most searched queries of the year. All popular search engines on internet have released their own top search terms in this year, and they might be interesting for you.

If you own a website, it is always good to know what is popular and in trend at the given moment. If you react fast and provide some quality work, you will success. As 2010 comes to a close, it is time to check out which terms was the most popular in 2010.

Google Top Search Terms in 2010

Google’s top search engine terms is also known as Google Zeitgeist. There you can see some detailed stats about search engine terms on a global or a local areas.

Here are the 10 search queries that grew fastest in 2010 (UK):
1 Chatroulette
2 Formspring
3 Hotmail signin
4 ipad
5 justin bieber
6 worldcup 2010
7 fb
8 santander
9 youtube
10 metcheck

Top 10 Fastest-Rising People that grew fastest in 2010 (UK)
1 Kristian digby
2 justin bieber
3 nicki minaj
4 ellie goulding
5 alexander
6 mcqueen
7 kesha
8 miranda kerr
9 kim kardashian
10 katy perry

Yahoo! Top Search Terms in 2010

Yahoo is one of the most popular search engine today. Serving billions of search queries each year with thousands of satisfied users and members worldwide.

Here are top 10 most popular search queries in 2010 (UK):

1. Lottery
2. Job centre
3. Weather
4. Big Brother
5. Cheryl Cole
6. TV guide
7. World Cup
8. Train times
9. Katie Price
10. Horoscopes

Yahoo! has a great website which shows a whole Year in Review. Showing you the most popular trends and keywords from this search engine, allowing you to find some other good information.

Bing Top Search Engine Terms in 2010

The Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft and it is one of the three most popular search engines on internet. Let’s see which terms was the most popular in 2010 from this search engine.

The most popular overall search queries in 2010 (USA):

1 kim kardashian
2 sandra bullock
3 tiger woods
4 lady gaga
5 barack obama
6 hairstyles
7 kate goosselin
8 walmart
9 justin bieber
10 free

Most popular people searched in 2010 on Bing:

1. Kim Kardashian
2. Sandra Bullock,
3. Tiger Woods,
4. Lady Gaga
5. Barack Obama
6. Kate Gosselin
7. Justin Bieber
8. Jesse James
9. Lindsay Lohan
10. Jennifer Aniston
11. Michael Jackson

You can also see the most popular people searched in 2010 on Bing from their official blog. Interesting thing to notice there is that Kim Kardashian has received roughly 20% more searches than the second most popular search term on Bing in 2010.

Top 10 Search Terms on All Search Engines

So, let’s now look which are the most popular search engine terms on all search engines was in 2010. Including all above search engine query stats from Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Top 10 overall search engine terms in 2010:

1 Justin Bieber (Celebrity)
2 World Cup (Global event)
3 iPad (Apple’s gadget)
4 iPhone (Apple’s gadget)
5 Kim Kardashian (Celebrity)
6 Lady Gaga (Celebrity)
7 Chatroulette (Online service)
8 BP Oil Spill (Global event)
9 Megan Fox (Celebrity)
10 Swine Flu (Global event)

So, what we can learn from this? We have here 4 celebrities, 3 global events, 2 popular gadgets and 1 online service. So, we can guarantee that the most popular searches on internet in UK (and probably worldwide) are related to the celebrities. Following with global events, Apple products and online services.

Augmented Reality (AR) is the next keyword wet dream for the online industry buzz word bingo enthusiasts. As social media becomes more ingrained in commercial planning and the excitement fades into practical solutions, it’s inevitable that the new kid on the block will start to make headlines.

I think AR is an exciting development. However, behind the pomp that surrounds another buzz word, is there a commercial model that could make AR a practical tool in the e-commerce armoury?

I’m going to stick my neck on the line and say yes….

What is Augmented Reality (AR)?

At a basic level, AR is the enrichment of your physical experience with virtual information and interaction. The best example to conceptualise this is the overlaying of maps on your mobile phone with local information such as directions to the nearest train station, which happens contextually as you navigate the map. For a more encompassing explanation, check out the Wikipedia entry for augmented reality.

What’s already out there?

The technology has been around for years, just think of televised Football games where the play markers are overlayed on the pitch for viewers at home. While the commercial application of AR may be relatively new, forward thinking brands have been busy experimenting.

Retail

1. Benetton used AR in a 2009 Colors magazine edition – pages with AR symbols could be held up to a webcam to display films of the person on the page. Whilst this is a basic application of what AR can achieve, Charles Arthur’s article on AR in the Guardian goes further and is worth reading.
2. Glasses Direct has a neat 3D tool that allows you to try glasses on using your webcam and what they call a virtual mirror. You can try the virtual mirror from their website.
3. Over in the US, Zugara offers the Augmented Reality and Motion Capture Shopping App. The app allows customers to render clothing onto their own bodies using a webcam. An intuitive interface lets you browse items and styles and get a feel for how the clothes will look on you. It also integrates neat community features like sharing pictures of your outfits with friends to get their opinion. You can then buy direct from the app.

Publishing

Grazia tested the waters with an enhanced 3D magazine that used AR codes that could be activated by webcam or iPhone. GQ has followed suit.

Automotive

GM is working with universities to develop a smart windscreen that overlays important information on the transparent windscreen display to enhance the driver’s ability to see objects in their physical space. I’m a bit unsure about this one and whether or not it could distract drivers and actually decrease safety but the concept is worth reading about.

What will drive the uptake of AR?

Quite simply, the increased usage of smart mobile devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, Kindle, iPad etc. There is a lot of discussion about the shift from desktop to mobile and the prediction that in several years time e-commerce will be dominated by mobile browsing.

The latest data from ComScore shows a 30% increase in social networking traffic among smartphone users in the past 12 months – so mobile is already driving social media usage. Research from Forrester shows that iPhone users are more affluent than users of other smartphones, therefore have a high propensity to respond to relevant retail offers direct to their phone. The average internet usage for an iPhone user is 100MB, x30 larger than on other phones. And we all know about the obsession with the iPhone App Store.

Where can it be applied for retail?

Attention spans will only decrease as technology breeds laziness and the expectation of rapid solution delivery. This means people will expect everything at their fingertips when they want it. The savvy marketers will deliver content and solutions that people didn’t even know they wanted but subconsciously always desired. I think retail can tap into this latent demand in several ways:

• High street retailers can develop a Store Finder mobile app that overlays local store information on interactive maps – perhaps an aggregation of all major brands would provide cost efficiency.
• Dynamic contextual advertising that displays offers and promotions based on the location and profile of the mobile user (e.g. iPhone user gets different message than Blackberry user) – next step on from voucher code sites.
• Serving customer reviews to mobile devices to facilitate decision making on the move.
• Dynamically generating cross and up-sell recommendations based on scanning a barcode in-store on your mobile phone.
• For the fashion industry, improving modelling of clothes from home to help make purchase decisions – increased accuracy should also help reduce returns.
• For the DIY industry, enabling customers to create 3D maps of their own rooms and then visually render colour schemes and furniture to help with DIY projects.
• Local tourist boards can create mobile maps of the region with key tourist hotspots, attractions and services – whilst free of charge they benefit the economy by encouraging spending.
• Museums could create virtual tours so that visitors are not reliant on a guided tour/headsets – for a download fee, you can launch the virtual tour which overlays commentary and content based on your location within the museum.
• In publishing, AR could be used to enrich the consumption of content to increase brand engagement, essential in such a competitive market.

So what do you think? Is AR powder puff or can it add real value to consumers and drive commercial value? I’m leaning to the latter because the increasing uptake of mobile devices gives me hope that AR solutions will catch the eye. I await the professional slaughter…

Six degrees of separation defines that given any two persons in the world, they can be related through at most six “friends of”. This concept was founded in 1995 and it has became part of the most welcomed notion being used around the world. It is also known as the Small World Phenomenon.

The phrase six degrees of separation is permanently etched into our collective psyches. The idea that every person in the world is generally no more than six degrees or connections removed from each other is a powerful, sticky concept that resonates with many people. Web 2.0 technologies, a continuation of the advancement of communication capabilities, may be helping us cut that average in half, especially through social networking sites like Facebook and microblogging services like Twitter.

Six degrees of separation

This catch phrase was inspired by the results of the “small world” experiments conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the United States of America in 1967 in order to determine how long it would take to get a letter from one stranger to another. After the results of this test were analyzed, Milgram’s team determined that the average path length, or the number of connections required to get from one point to another, was approximately 5.5, which rounds up to six.

Watch the documentary unfolding the science behind the idea of six degrees of separation. Originally thought to be an urban myth, it now appears that anyone on the planet can be connected in just a few steps of association. Six degrees of separation is also at the heart of a major scientific breakthrough; that there might be a law which nature uses to organize itself and that now promises to solve some of its deepest mysteries.

Interesting Links :
Microsoft proves there are just six degrees of separation between us
Six Degrees of Separation, Twitter Style

Here’s a brilliant talk from author Matt Ridley at TED Oxford about the power of collaboration and exchange to create ideas.

Matt suggests that recent human progress is down to the combination of multiple ideas or ideas having sex using the biological metaphor.

Matt highlights the significant shift from making things for ourselves like simple tools, to today’s computer mouse, where millions of people are all making things for us.

This happened when human beings started to exchange between groups which happened around 100,000 years ago- people were trading before they were farming.

He quotes from the economist Leonard Reed, that no one knows how to make complete things anymore, we’ve gone beyond the capacity of individuals and it’s now all about the collective brain.

Technological progress is coming from the exchange, meeting and mating of ideas which is such a powerful force that it will conquer many of the major challenges that lie ahead.

Twitter’s attempts at developing a viable business selling ads are in full swing. Twitter’s latest experiment in this area: paid trending topics.

As I write this, Twitter users will find ‘Toy Story 3‘ in the list of Twitter’s worldwide trending topics. But unlike the other trending topics, it has a prominent ‘Promoted‘ image next to it.

According to TechCrunch, Twitter has confirmed that Disney/Pixar are paying for the Toy Story 3 trending topic:

As we have always said, we plan to test different advertising and promotional models in these early stages of our monetization efforts for both user and brand value. As part of this effort, we are testing trends clearly marked as “promoted” for an undefined period of time.

Like normal (read: unpaid) trending topics, clicking on the link generates a search result for the term. At the top of the list: a promoted tweet that Disney/Pixar is ostensibly also paying for. Below it: several ‘Top Tweets‘, which appear to be tweets that have been retweeted 100+ times.

On the surface, it looks like Twitter has come up with a fairly clever solution. The Toy Story 3 promoted trending topic is likely to expose far more Twitter users to Disney/Pixar’s promoted tweet, which has a link to Disney’s disneyticketstogether.com, a Facebook-based ticket sales application.

Of course, Twitter’s solution has to be more than just clever; it needs to deliver ROI. And when it comes to ROI, it’s not entirely clear that promoted trending topics, used in concert with promoted tweets, will ever be as effective as, say, AdWords when it comes to delivering intent and action. Two clicks are required (first on the trending topic, and then on the link in the promoted tweet). And since disneyticketstogether.com is on Facebook, Facebook members who aren’t logged in will have to log in. Non-Facebook members are, of course, out of luck.

Notwithstanding the structure of this campaign specifically, promoted trending topics also pose some risk for advertisers, as they can’t entirely control the tweets that appear in the search results. Not only could these tweets be negative, it seems like this may open the door for subversive guerilla marketing campaigns in some markets. Hypothetically, for instance, what would stop Reebok from engaging in a campaign to hijacking the search results for a Nike promoted trending topic?

Since promoted trending topics are an experiment, Twitter obviously has time to figure these sorts of things out. But one thing is clear: Twitter is serious about monetizing, and just about every part of the Twitter service is fair game.

HTML5 is coming, and a growing number of companies are trying to kick the Flash habit, even if on a limited basis. The latest: popular online document sharing service Scribd.

According to the startup’s CTO, “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash.”

It’s a big move for the company, which hosts tens of millions of documents containing more than 100bn words in total. All of those documents are currently displayed via a Flash-based reader, but starting tomorrow, 200,000 of the most popular will be available through an HTML5 interface. Eventually all of Scribd’s documents will be served up through the HTML5 interface.

One might assume that Adobe has reason to be concerned about all of the companies looking beyond Flash to HTML5. After all, Flash is a big part of the company’s portfolio of web technologies.

But Adobe isn’t admitting concern — publicly at least. Instead, it’s aware of the web’s evolution and plans to be an integral part of the HTML5-enabled internet. At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco yesterday, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch told the audience, “We’re going to try and make the best tools in the world for HTML5.”

Speaking of those “who want to wall off parts of the web” and naming Apple specifically, Lynch said that “what’s going on now…[is] like railroads in the 1800s. People were using different gauged rails. Your cars would literally not run on those rails. That’s counter to the web.”

With that in mind, Adobe appears to be focused on positioning itself as a provider of tools that make it easier for developers to build solutions that work on all of the popular internet and mobile platforms — with a few exceptions, of course, like the iPhone.

Lynch may or may not be right about the nature of the web, but Adobe has little choice but to bet its future on extending its design and development tools to new technologies, even if it isn’t the owner or creator of those technologies. That, of course, has an immediate implication: trying to find a place for Adobe’s products as more and more companies get interested in HTML5. This is a good thing for the company, as Adobe’s refusal to move beyond Flash would probably prove to be a costly mistake over the long haul. Obviously, it remains to be seen just how prominent a role Adobe can earn in the HTML5 universe, but by recognizing that HTML5 is going to change the game for RIAs, Adobe is choosing to try to stay relevant before the market decides for it.

This said, Adobe would probably be making a mistake if it neglects Flash too much. For all of HTML5′s purported virtues and Flash’s well-established disadvantages, there is still a place for Flash on the web. To be sure, there are plenty of applications which don’t require Flash, and it will probably be a good thing as those applications are transitioned away.

One of the primary reasons Flash gets a bad rap is that it’s often used in situations where it’s not necessary, or where alternative technologies would be a better fit. But Flash is still appropriate for certain kinds of applications, and hopefully as the ratio between these and the ‘bad‘ Flash applications becomes better aligned, it will be easier for companies and developers to move away from ideology and simply choose the right tools for the job.

Britain’s universities are working hard to attract international students. With the government announcing British Universities are to expect a £950 million cut in funding over the next three years, higher education institutions need to look elsewhere for financial support.

The average non-EU student tuition fees for arts and science undergraduate degrees are around £10,000 per year, and with the potential to reach £20,000 depending on the course and establishment, the financial benefits for cash-strapped UK universities to recruit international students is obvious.

Having a strong online presence is vital. Statistics show that 31.7% of the 338m internet users in China are students. It is likely that students already look to the Internet as their primary source of information on UK universities.

Here are a few steps universities can take to ensure they target the right market, and that usability is optimised:

1. Identify key phrases specific to the target market.

   Incorporating them into the site will vastly improve SEO.

   Therefore it would be beneficial to feature a section on the university’s ‘ranking’ – a popular search phrase for Chinese students.

2. Localised research will give an insight into what students are looking for.A prominent London university points out that whilst business, law, and economics degrees are popular with their Chinese students, performing arts, media and psychology degrees are the chosen topics for Japanese.

   Marketing the subjects that are more likely to be popular within a nationality is more likely to bring ROI.

3. Social network sites are an effective way to market to potential international students.A vast majority of social network users are young people (aged 16-24). Again, it is important to keep in mind the locality of the market. Although Facebook and Twitter maybe the initial social sites that spring to mind in the UK, in China www.renren.com is popular with the student demographic.

Although Britain is currently second only to the USA in attracting overseas students, the competition is growing. France, Singapore and Germany are just a few of the countries who have employed strategies to attract potential international students, and with recent and upcoming changes to the UK’s student visa policy, it is more important than ever for the UK’s higher education institutions to up their stakes in international marketing.

The key to their success is to embrace modern technological advances.

In the battle to get real-time results into search engines, there’s one business that stands to benefit a lot: spam. It’s simply a fact of social life online that as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and others all struggle to provide the most relevant up to the second information, they are ceding quality control of results.

And that’s only natural. Search engines have to relax their algorithms to get the most current information, which makes it exceedingly easy for spammers to win a spot at the top of search results pages. And as spamming gets easier for hackers, it also gets harder for digital marketers to get their results up on the page. Is there anything to be done about it?

The short answer is no. Spam now accounts for 88% of all emails, and Symantec’s MessageLabs division has detected and blocked 2,465 newly compromised websites per day this year, up nearly 8% from 2,290 in 2008. According to Cisco’s 2009 Annual Security Report released last week, social media presents an increasingy high security risk because consumers trust information sent from friends more than other links.

Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of SearchEngineLand, tells USAToday:

“It’s simple to attach spam or a link to a corrupted website… Tainted posts moving quickly and intermittently into search results could be very hard to filter…. It’s an entirely new cat-and-mouse game.”

Web surfers are becoming more adept at avoiding traditional spam — they are increasingly wary of banking sites and unbelievable offers delivered to their email inboxes. But in social media, clicking on links from unknown users is increasingly common.

The standard Google algorithm screens web pages for spam before including them in the top of results, but real-time search puts new and topical content at a priority.

The benefits of real-time information bring with them increased risks. Trending search terms are important as they’re happening, where they’re coming from does not matter as much.

From a user perspective, high levels of spam may be easy to ignore in real-time data. If search engines can figure out how to filter out irrelevant results, great. But users understand that getting the most current data currently involves receiving some less useful information as well.

For spammers, thaat means the benefits are high. Getting into the top of Google’s search results — albeit briefly — can be a huge win with little effort expended.

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products at Google, has faith in real time search, but admitted to TechCrunch that returning relevant results is harder in real-time:

“We can’t simply apply the PageRank algorithm to content shared in real time, but we look at the ecosystem and detect signals we can use to reveal authority, for instance. It’s difficult, but there are data points out there that can be used for filtering.”

That said, she said she trusts real-time results “most of the time,” even if they don’t come from friends in her social network.

However, the service could have real costs for brands. Some think real-time will lead to more spending on PPC campaigns by marketers. According to High Position:

“A simply constructed file, an authoritative landing page and a Twitter account is supposedly all it takes for spammers to get the upper hand; which means that the SEO industry may have to rely more heavily on PPC campaigns to produce consistent results, as the ability to produce authoritative organic results lessens.”

And the newness of real-time search is one guarantee that spammers will run rampant on the service for awhile. As Dave Snyder puts it at Search Engine Journal:

“Seriously, any new feature that Google rolls out is a playground for SPAM. My head is spinning thinking of all the cool/evil implications of the service. I am sure lots of people are going to be testing how Google is choosing the results coming in the box. Some people might ask the importance of coming up for a mere moment in that position, but the sheer amount of traffic generated for a trending term can make even a 30 second window profitable.”

While Google may benefit from marketers spending more money to show up higher in results now that Twitter (and spam) occupy more real estate on the search results, in the long term it is in the search giant’s best interest to return the most relevant results for users. Or it will be replaced by an engine that masters that better.

Consumers are likely to become more savvy when it comes to social spam. And while it will be another irritation for digital marketers, it is likely here to stay. As as long as real-time spam remains profitable, it will continue to exist.

Most web design companies are one or two person operations, with little to no free time for items like after-sales service.

You are usually so busy with current projects that answering calls from past customers can seem like an unnecessary and non-profitable chore.

Here is how you can plug back in to your client base and turn customer service into the profit center that you never thought it would be.

1. Ditch the “Pump and Dump” Model

Many of us tell ourselves that web design isn’t like other businesses. Therefore, we don’t have to behave as other business people do. We can design websites, get our final payment from the customer once the job is done and move on to the next client. This is completely wrong thinking. Web design is a service just like landscaping, legal representation or car repair. You are providing a service for money. While you may be in demand now, in a downturn you will only keep your business profitable if you provide outstanding service. While you do need to devote a certain percentage of your time to finding new leads, you should devote the same amount of time each week to helping out your past clients.

2. Make Your Terms Clear

Most web design firms offer maintenance packages or charge for updates. While it is important to provide good customer service, you should spell out clearly what constitutes free customer service and what constitutes a paid request.

This is best handled in your initial contract with the customer. Many web designers don’t like to produce contracts as they are worried about scaring off the customer. On the contrary, the customer will often view such a move as a legitimate business transaction and a sign that you are a professional. Be very wary of any company that is not willing to sign a contract for whatever reason.

The contract should include a copy of your quote to your customer with a statement that anything over and above what is included in the quotation will be charged out separately. One-time charges for updates and maintenance packages should be on offer in the contract and on your website so that clients can refer back to these charges.

3. Deal With Emergencies

We’ve all gotten that strange call from a client declaring that something is an emergency and needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW, regardless of what that emergency is. While it may not be an emergency to you, your client perceives it as such and how quickly you deal with that emergency will reflect on your business. It may be helpful to explain to your client that something isn’t as bad as it seems after the fact, but don’t even go there unless you have fixed the issue at hand.

4. Treat Every Contact as an Opportunity

From simple questions about search engines to irate clients, each call is an opportunity for you to reach out and either educate or placate your client. One of the most common complaints about web design companies is their lack of responsiveness after the project is complete. All you need to do to combat this is answer your clients when they phone or e-mail you.

You can build on this by weaving sales techniques into your after-sales service. The key to doing this properly is to address the actual needs of your customer. When a customer calls you, ask them at the end of the call how everything is going and if there is anything more that you can do for them. This is when they’ll start telling you about a form they have been thinking of adding or a new technology that they want to try out. Leave it open-ended and let the customer talk. If they simply say “No.”, then thank them for their call and move on to your projects. At least one in ten of them will probably say “Yes” and give you more business.

E-mails are a tricky subject. One of the problems with e-mail is that we get so many of them in our business day that it is easy to let a customer request fall to the bottom of the pile. Flag customer requests or put them in their own folder for immediate answering so that this doesn’t happen to you. If an e-mail isn’t something that requires an e-mail reply, such as a customer asking for a link to something, pick up the phone and call them. You’ll have a much better chance of impressing the customer over the phone then you will over e-mail.

5. Identify and Cultivate “Angel” Customers

Develop an 80/20 list. It is a general rule that 20% of your clients are responsible for 80% of your income. Once you have identified them, treat these clients as “angel” customers. You need to retain their loyalty in order to keep your business viable. This may mean taking each of them out to lunch a couple of times a year or bringing them to a lecture on search engine marketing at a local trade show. Whatever you do, make sure that you don’t just know their names, but can actually come close to calling them friends after a while. While this concept may seem tacky, it is an old school way of doing business that most people still appreciate. Loyalty is earned by doing a good job first and forging a relationship second. If you don’t forge that relationship, your customer does not have the necessary loyalty to return to you for their website needs.

6. Turn The Rest of Your Customers Into “Angels”

Look at the remaining 80% on your list. Ideally, you would like to move them into the 20% column. You can do this by sending out educational e-mail newsletters, sending Christmas cards once a year and occasionally calling them to see if they need anything or have any questions for you. Treat these calls with the same importance as your sales calls – they will lead to just as much business. Consider having pens or other promotional items made with your logo and sending them to your customer, then following up with a phone call to make sure that they got them.

If you can find a way to incorporate at least a few of these customer service ideas into your everyday business, you’ll be making your clients happier and making a little more money in the process.

I know, I know…none of us creative types want anything to do with coding past the very basic HTML/CSS we need to know to get our designs to the developers.

Doing development is something for those programming grunts, those code jockeys, those geeks.

Why should we enter the trenches of development when it’s so nice up here with the Photoshop brushes, afternoon tea, and MacPros? ??Because you’ll be a better designer for it.

Skeptical? Read on and discover 6 reasons why designers should code…

1. Better XHTML

I’ve worked with and known many designers who knew only the bare minimum needed to get their designs out of Photoshop and into a web format. Oftentimes they would make use of a software program or plugin like SiteGrinder. While these programs keep getting better and better at making compliant code, they still don’t match the human-produced variety.

Knowing how to write your own standards-compliant XHTML will make you a valuable addition to any web team (emphasis on the standards-compliant part). With all the fuss about PHP, ASP.NET, Ruby, and many other languages, people tend to forget that everything ends up being HTML in the end, because that’s what your browser has to have in order to render a page. The more you know about the medium you work in, the better you work in that medium.

2. Better SEO

And while we’re talking about standards-compliant code, we should mention SEO. This is a big buzzword, though not quite as much as it has been in the past. However, what this means is that SEO is becoming a much more commonplace idea of what a website should strive for, instead of just an added special feature for big business sites.

If you can learn to write your own code, you’re much closer to being able to list “SEO Compliant Designs” on your sheet of available services. That means you can charge more, and it’s another badge on your hat.

3. Better Accessibility

Better code and better SEO = better accessibility. Part of of the job of any designer is to present information in a clear and coherent manner, and on the web that means not solely in a visual manner. A shoddily-coded website can be a nightmare to navigate if you’re blind, or even if you’re using a mobile device.

Learning the ins and outs of developing code for accessibility not only allows you have that knowledge as part of your production skillset, but it will also help you to better understand the considerations you should take when designing for accessibility.

Accessibility is a mandate for all government websites, nearly all education sites, and businesses are starting to see the value in it as well. The more people you can reach via your site, the more chance you have of accomplishing your goal, whatever it may be. And that has to be reflected in any successful design.

4. Better Left Side

Being a right-brained creative is great, but giving your left side a workout can spur on creativity of a different nature. The motto at the bottom of the WordPress website is “Code Is Poetry”, and this is because translating a written language to something that can be visually seen is truly an art form.

Learning to write your own code opens up whole new avenues of expression. Developing your technical and analytical abilities can improve your information design, developing wireframes, and create a pathway to work with interaction design. And who knows, it may even improve your math skills!

5. Better Communication

It’s easy to get lost in the techno-jargon used by developers, simply because you may not have been exposed to the type of things they are discussing. Digging in and working with code yourself will allow you to become familiar with the terminology that is used when conversing about the construction of a site.

Being able to speak the lingo will help when you need to communicate with a developer or project manager about how a design should be implemented.

6. Better Design

You can only do so much knowing the fundamentals of design. Typography, color theory, composition, etc. are all fantastic and extremely important skills to know (and know well)…but eventually if you want to excel in your creativity, you must learn the tools of the trade. Painters learn about canvas types, paint compositions, and bristle qualities. Web design is no exception. Learn to code: you’ll be better for it.