Give your marketing a shared direction.

Schools face a real problem: how can teachers tell whether students are learning or letting AI do the work? One professor hid a trap in an assignment. Other students had to defend their work after detection tools flagged it. Some teachers are turning to oral exams to hear students explain what they ...

Answer engine optimization, or AEO, sounds like another shiny acronym marketers are supposed to chase. I get the temptation to roll your eyes a little. SEO was already hard enough before AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and every other answer-shaped interface started changing how people ...

Leading a web design and development team can come with all sorts of challenges. The most common challenges come from two key areas. First, the competencies required to build a website are the broadest of all in the digital marketing space. Second, most agencies don’t treat web design and ...

A neighbor once asked if she could pick my brain about what it takes to move into web design and development. She was starting her degree program and still had a couple of years before she would enter the field, but she was smart to start asking the question early. I originally planned to answer ...

A hero banner is the large, high-visibility section at the top of a website page, usually combining a headline, supporting message, visual design, and a call-to-action. On a homepage, it is often the first real message a visitor sees after the navigation. That makes it more than a design element. ...

Your website can look fine and still underperform. That is the frustrating part. It can have a modern design, decent images, a working contact form, and all the usual pages while still failing to help visitors understand what you do, trust your expertise, and take the next step.

I started dabbling in web development in 1996. That makes it about 30 years for me. My first WordPress site was in 2004, then I moved heavily into Drupal in 2007 because, at the time, it gave me the structure and flexibility I wanted for serious business websites.

When I started Tribute Media in 2007, I did not have the goal of building a web company that I could end up selling. I simply repurposed an old name for another company that failed and I just needed a company name to bill against. I just had one client that I was fulfilling for, so the name didn't ...

Before starting Tribute Media, I worked as a sales manager for a local company. With my design and marketing background, the president asked me to create a brochure. I struggled because our client service was inconsistent, making it hard to write honestly.

When you consider your web presence, you may be thinking that if you build it, your clients will come. All too often I hear from clients, “I spent $10,000 on my web site and it is really pretty. Why are people not coming to my site?” There are many answers to why this might be but the easiest way ...

In October 2007, after losing a job, I founded Tribute Media with little more than grit and a friend's help. We had a shoestring budget, no dedicated marketing team, and I was learning on the fly—making mistakes that cost time and money. I was very fortunate that I had an external partner that ...

When I started my business career, I worked in customer service for a company called Eleva. Try to pronounce that. Is it uh-leev-uh, ell-uh-vuh, hell-if-I-know? My bet is that however you try to pronounce it, you’re probably wrong.