Kinkade was an anomaly. His success was incredible and he boasted over $100 million in sales in American homes throughout the land. Critics found his work pedantic and uninspiring, but the masses simply fell in love with his obvious religious bent and inspiring artwork displayed in over 4,500 galleries across the United States. Kinkade labeled himself as America’s most collected artist and stated his work was displayed in over 10 million homes. His paintings range in cost from $100 to over $10,000.

His popularity proves the point that critics do not pay the bills. Americans have been fans from his humble beginnings and his artwork is sure to sell briskly on news of his recent death. Kinkade was an ardent supporter of the Salvation Army and he donated millions to charity.

His websites feature his artwork. In terms of design, they are not new or innovative. However, his artwork seems to jump off the canvass and transport the viewer to his world of light and wonder. Check out his website at ThomasKinkade.com.

The world will miss this unique individual who broke all the rules, went against the current, and enjoyed a love affair with the American public.

What makes a great web design? Is there a set of finite features or facets of a design that will set it above the rest? How can you avoid a humdrum mundane web site? There seems to be elements in all the best web designs that create the best overall effect. Flashy graphics are nice and certainly a sense of humor is a plus, but what must every great web site incorporate?

First, you must provide credible and original content in as many forms as possible. Any great web site must have original content. So many sites simply refer to other material and it becomes mundane and encourages the browser to flip to another site. Information that is only found on your site will keep the reader and eliminated people from navigating away from your site.

The timeliness of the content is also of paramount importance. Nothing is worse than visiting as website that has not been updated in over a year. A well-edited and updated website draws much more attention than a dormant site rarely updated.

Custom-tailoring a website is a must. Looking at a generic site that 15,000 other companies have is simply boring and non-productive. It simply will not invite revisiting if the site is not stimulating in some respect.

Being responsive to your audience is of great value in repeat visits and making your site relevant.

Finally- make your site easy to read and navigate. A confusing and complicated site is doomed to failure.

One other thing I like about their website is the design for their blog. They made their blog look a little different from the rest of the site just to give it a blog feel, but still kept the main structure and color scheme. I think it makes for an easier transition. I have seen other websites that keep the same look throughout the site and because the blog keeps that same look, it isn’t visually appealing. I have also seen some websites link out to their blog located on blogger and they still use a standard blogger template. For one thing that breaks up the flow by sending them to another website, for another it looks cheap. I highly recommend people don’t do that. I think you won’t look very legitimate if you are linking out to another website for your blog.

If you want to check out the Internet marketing company’s website that I was looking at earlier, their name is HigherVisibility. Please leave me any comments if you liked this post.