• Accessibility and Usability

The Importance of Ensuring Web Accessibility

The internet should be a great equalizer, open and accessible to all people regardless of ability. Yet today's digital landscape is littered with barriers that exclude millions.

• Fun!

This Holiday Season, We’re Customizing Your Cookie Experience

The Lyquix team focused on cookies for this year's holiday card! Just as we specialize in customizing designs and code to suit our clients’ needs, we’re crafting the ideal holiday cookie experience - one we’re confident you won’t hesitate to “accept”.

• Fun!

Happy Holidays from our New Home to Yours!

After 8 years in the Old City section of Philadelphia, we have moved to an office above the Fashion District.

• Design

Figma Joins the Lyquix Toolkit

Lyquix is continually evaluating our workflow and toolkit to provide the best experience and end product for our clients. In 2014, that meant switching from using the Adobe Suite as our primary web design tool to using Sketch, a tool created for the sole purpose of designing for the web.

• Fun!

All I Want for Christmas is a New Website

Around the holiday season, we all have gifts that we secretly hope Santa or a relative will deliver under the tree. It could be a piece of clothing, tech toy, video game, or adult beverage. For some, it’s even more specific…

• Design

Lessons In Font Design

Learning how to design a font — from inspiration to sketching, digital drawing, refinement, and production — and what I gained from the experience.

• Fun!

A Very Virtual Holiday

During any other December, the Lyquix team would be busy in the office finishing up projects before the end of the year, enjoying the city's holiday festivities, and bundling up for our winter commutes. However, with the Lyquix team working remotely since mid-March, this holiday season feels much different!

• Fun!

Holiday Card 2019: What do we meme?

• Digital Marketing

GDPR: What You Need To Know

GDPR is a European privacy law that went into effect on May 25, 2018. It imposes new regulations that may affect many US business, and may have great implications from legal, process, technical, and security perspectives. In this post we will present our initial findings on how GDPR may impact you and your business.

• Fun!

Beyond the Dining Room: How Web Services, Social Media, and Mobile Apps Have Changed Tabletop Gaming

Tabletop Roleplaying Games have existed since the 1970s, but recent technological advancements have changed the way that some of these games are played.

• Digital Marketing

A Better Web for Everyone

With the advancement of technology in the digital world, the internet is always changing. The tension between advertisers, users, and businesses is just another one of those changes. What we can be sure of is, when this tension resolves, the internet as we know it most likely will not be the same.

• Fun!

How Lyquix Takes Its Coffee

With an office located in the middle of Old City Philadelphia, we have access to great coffee options and if you’re one of the 150 million Americans who drink coffee every day, you know exactly how important that is to us. Here’s the listicle you’ve been waiting for: Lyquix’s top 4 favorite coffees to drink at work.

• Technology

What is Net-Neutrality?

In the last couple years net-neutrality has been in the news, and just last week, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced plans to repeal net-neutrality regulations. Many of our clients and friends have asked us "what is net-neutrality?" In this post we explain net-neutrality and why we think it is imperative to preserve net-neutrality regulations.

• Design
• Technology

Variable Fonts: Responsive Type for Responsive Web

Typography that is viewed on a screen should adapt to individual viewing circumstances, such as the user’s browser, device, screen resolution, screen brightness, and viewing distance. Although there are currently fonts created specifically for web use, they do not respond dynamically to fluctuating viewing conditions, causing issues with legibility, loading speed, and aesthetic appearance.

• Fun!

Door to the New World

Inspiration can be found anywhere - from the websites we depend on everyday to world-class museums on the other side of the world. As a designer, every experience has the potential to become the origin point of a creative design solution for a client project here at Lyquix. While some of this design inspiration is easily accessible, I’ve found that sometimes the best insight comes out of just a little bit of adventuring.

• Security

Lessons from the Equifax Breach

The breach that exposed 145 million Americans was very easily preventable. Make sure you don't make the same mistake.

• Accessibility and Usability
• Design

Good Design and the Science of Thinking

Online users have very short attention spans that seem to respond only to short messages, buzzwords and flashy images. Understand how this behavior is a consequence of the way our brains are naturally wired to successfully grab users' attention and deliver your message.

• Development

5 Technical Questions You Should Ask When Selecting A Website Development Agency

One of the challenges for marketing groups when selecting a partner for a website development project is knowing the right technical questions to ask during the interview and proposal process.A primary reason for bringing in an external team is to gain a skill set that is outside of the typical knowledge base of the in-house team. So, how do you properly evaluate a skill set that is not a core competency of the group doing the evaluation?

• Fun!

Holiday Card 2016: Mini-Me's!

For the past couple of years our holiday card has been ugly-sweater themed. As much fun as that was, this year we decided to shake things up a bit and go-small-or-go-home with a holiday toy catalog theme...which involved ordering 3-inch 3D prints of the entire team. Enjoy!

• Design
• Development

Keep an Eye on Images

Images are a critical aspect of every website, an essential part of the design and content. When technical details are overlooked, the idiosyncrasies of images can quickly compound to create image production, management, and performance nightmares.

• Digital Marketing

What's Your Content Development Aptitude?

How successful A/E/C firms excel at content marketing.

• Accessibility and Usability

Time to Remove Comments From Your Website?

Over the past two years, several high-traffic news sites: Recode, Reuters, Popular Science, The Week, Mic, The Verge, and USA Today’s FTW, and mostly recently NPR.org have removed the ability for users to submit comments on their sites. These organizations cite moderation issues, the value of anonymity among commenters, legal issues, and emergence of social media as the reasons for removing comments from their respective sites.

• Digital Marketing

Who's Visiting My Website?

Don’t miss out on potential leads or business opportunities by ignoring an easily accessed list of the companies that are browsing your website. In this post, I’ll review how by utilizing either standard analytics tools or third party web applications, you can obtain a wealth of data that can help feed your sales pipeline.

• Security

Your site will be hacked. Can you handle it?

You can't ignore reality: thousands of websites are hacked every day and it can happen to you. Your website is probably being attacked right now and you don't even know about it. While it sounds daunting, with the right systems and procedures in place, you can rest easy knowing that you have prepared for a cyber crisis. This article will provide a summary of the best practices for minimizing risk, and for recovering your website should an intrusion occur.

• Accessibility and Usability

Web Accessibility - Why It Matters

Websites and apps provide users who can type, click, and swipe, read, see, and hear with an unprecedented amount of information and convenience. We communicate, shop, schedule, learn, and share experiences via the internet. Unfortunately, those with disabilities and impairments are not afforded the same access to information and convenience.

• Digital Marketing

Beware of Ghosts in Your Analytics! How to Manage Google Analytics Spam

I was recently working with a client on an award submission for a website developed by our team. One of the submission requirements was to demonstrate the results and impact of the project.As we started diving into the referral source data, we noticed that there were several referring sites with which we were not familiar. Why were visitors arriving from sites like traffic2cash.xyz and free-social-buttons.xyz?

• Digital Marketing
• Security

Content Creation: The Challenge and The Opportunity

In our last blog post, we discussed three recommendations for improving your digital marketing effectiveness in 2016. In this post, we’re going to tackle what we have found to be the most challenging task for many organizations - content creation.

• Digital Marketing

Three Recommendations for the New Year (2016)

Happy New Year!As we enter 2016, we thought we would provide you with three recommendations to help boost your digital marketing effectiveness in 2016.

• Fun!

Sweater-Fest 2015

Based on the success of our holiday card last year we decided to kick off this year’s Christmas-Creep with another round of fun sweaters, this time with an added twist!

• Digital Marketing
• Technology

The Mobile Evolution - The Impact of Google's Prioritization of Mobile Sites

On April 21, 2015, Google changed its search algorithm to favor "mobile friendly" websites. We discuss the reasons Google made the change, how it affects your organization, & how you can ensure that your site adheres to the new standards.

• Development

Website Design: To Do-It-Yourself, or Not

We live in a do-it-yourself (DIY) society. Name the task, and there is at least one TV show (or an entire cable channel), website, Facebook page, or book devoted to helping you complete it on your own.

• Digital Marketing

New Year’s Resolution: Smarter Social Media Campaigns

As we move into 2015, most of us have spent some time setting goals and objectives for the New Year. Many studies, including Gartner’s CMO Spend 2015, have found that 2015 will be the year that organizations seek to optimize their social media efforts through targeted, integrated campaigns.

• Fun!

The Making of Sweater-fest 2014

Ok Guys, It finally happened.

• Development

"Mobile First" Demystified

"Mobile first" has become one of the many buzz words that we hear when talking with clients about optimizing their websites for mobile devices. In many cases there is lack of understanding of what it means, what it takes, and the differences with "desktop first." Let us clear the air and explain what all this buzz is really about.

• Digital Marketing

Give and You Shall Receive

How to Please Your Social Media Audience with Reciprocity

• Security

HTTPS: Why Security is an Important Part of Your Site’s SEO Strategy

Let’s start with the basics. What the heck is HTTPS / SSL and how does it all work?

• Digital Marketing

Market Like A Gamer

Marketers can learn a thing or two from video game developers about generating excitement, anticipation and continued engagement for a product. Gartner estimates that the world gaming industry grew to $93 billion in 2013 and will continue to $111 Billion in 2015.

• Development

Incorporating Video into Your Website (The Techie Stuff)

Video can be complicated and intimidating. Terms like streaming, codecs, bitrates and CDN are not regular lingo for most of us. However, at the end of this post you will have the confidence to deploy new videos on your website.

• Development

Incorporating Video Into Your Web Site (Part 1)

As a popular content marketing tactic, video provides website visitors an alternative channel to find and engage with content. Video is often a more effective way to engage with viewers — one survey reports the average time on site is over 8X longer for video vs. text based sites (5:50 vs :42).

• Development

Testing your Mobile App-titude: Is a Mobile App the Right Solution for Your Business?

In 2013 smartphone sales surpassed feature phone sales for the first time. For marketers and business leaders, this constant connectivity provides great opportunity to place their brands into the hands of consumers.

• Design
• Digital Marketing
• Technology

30% of your customers browse your site on mobile devices. How's their experience?

30% of the web traffic in North America is mobile traffic. Mobile web browsing is set to overtake desktop browsing in the next few years. Some estimates even have this happening in North America in 2014. This means that most visitors to your website will be browsing, shopping and interacting from a mobile device.

• Digital Marketing
• Technology

MicroData - The Future of Search Engine Relevance and Optimization (SEO)

The job of a search engine is to provide relevant results for a user query. One of the challenges that search engines face when trying to define relevance for a given query, is trying to understand the content of a webpage on which the information is presented in a mostly unstructured way.

• Technology

How Doctors Operate Online and Why It Matters To Healthcare Marketers

One of the many ironies of the U.S. healthcare system is that you can schedule an appointment to have surgery done with a robot, but more than likely, you still have to fill out paper forms that ask for the same information over and over.

• Design

Connecting With Color

Have you ever walked into an office or room and instantly felt a sense of gloom and overall …blah? If you think about that place - what color was it? My guess is that there were not brightly colored yellow walls or powder blue cubicles adorning the floor. There probably were not healthy and lively flowers or eye catching pictures accenting the walls and tables. It probably wasn't colorful.

• Digital Marketing

Sowing The Seeds Of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Scene: The Boss knows all about Google and how important it is that your organization appear at the top in search results. She just did a search on a term related to your business and 'Guess what?', you are not appearing at the top of the page. This needs to be fixed!

• Development
• Technology

Is HTML5 Replacing Flash?

The recent arguments between Apple and Adobe regarding Flash support in iPhone and iPad has fueled the discussion on video using HTML5 vs. Flash.In this post I comment on current status of standards and browser support and whether HTML5 will replace Flash.

• Security

Very Secure and Simple Passwords

In December 2009, a major password breach occurred. The hacker posted on the Internet the complete list of 32 million passwords. An analysis of the list provides a terrifying view of the weakness of password-based security.

• Accessibility and Usability

Understand How Users Behave

When designing a website or a mobile app it's important to understand how users really behave. A design that adapts to user behavior will allow for more intuitive navigation. The fast pace of the Internet combined with the very low impact of bad choices —when clicking on the wrong link usually nothing bad happens and you can go back very quickly— have made them impatient and undisciplined.

• Accessibility and Usability

You Are Not The Typical User

This is the first of a series of posts on Web Usability that I will be writing in the coming months. If you are involved in the design or development of a website in any capacity, the first thing you should acknowledge and embrace is that you are not the typical user.

• Digital Marketing

How to be successful with new web initiatives

The expensive way to try new web technologies is the "throw it against the wall and see if it sticks" approach. One of the traps that many organizations fall into when launching a new web initiative is putting the focus of the project on new technology or new functionality.

• Development
• Technology

What To Look For When Looking For Web Hosting

Looking for web hosting can be a confusing if you are not an IT person. In this article I will give you some guidelines on the things you need to consider to make a good decision.

• Digital Marketing

Nuff' Said

If you work in marketing, you probably share this experience: You are trying to write copy for a website, brochure or email campaign. Your client – who might be your boss or an outside client – can’t stop adding to the project. “But we also can provide X! We need to tell our customers that, too. What about the history of the company? Can you add a photo of everyone who works here?”

• Security

Do We Need To Hide Passwords?

Hiding passwords on web forms and other computer applications have become a de facto standard practice. But, do we really need to hide passwords?

• Digital Marketing

Help! The Recession Ate My Budget

Tell me if you’ve heard this one, “All the research shows that companies that spend on marketing during a recession, come out ahead of the competition as the economy rebounds.” I estimate that I have heard that statement from a marketer at least once for every conference and networking event that I’ve attended in the past year. It is a catchy buzz phrase, and if people believe it, even better. But here’s the thing – what research?

• Development
• Digital Marketing

Domain Names Are Still Important

Even with the use of search engines like Google and Yahoo to find websites people still type web and email addresses. Having an inadequate domain name can become a serious handicap in your business. This situation was evident for a client I recently worked for.