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5 Things You Should Avoid In Email Design

Web Design Tips No Comment

What Is Email Design?
People who have email accounts receive messages everyday. So the major challenge you have is making sure that the person receiving the message reads it despite the many messages he receives everyday.

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An example of a good e-mail design

You have less than five seconds to convince the person receiving the message to consider reading it. Thus, it is very important for the message to have the right message, tone, and look. That is why good email design is important.

The Email Design Process
Although there is no standard way of making an email message, a number of issues apply for email design. First, keep the subject line as relevant, interesting, and short as possible. When it comes to the content, consider using shorter paragraphs instead of longer ones. In addition, remember to add links to the content so that people can take action. Finally, apply the 80/20 rule when dealing with text and images respectively.

Complicated Design
There is an old adage that “less is more”. This concept applies when you are designing an email. Images should not be your priority in the email. Actually, you should design the email as if there will be no images. This is because many platforms leave out images unless the images allows. Many recipients of your message may not see the beautifully done images because of this. You need to persuade the recipients enough to open the images. Therefore, consider using a simple design for your email.

Using Loud Colors
Many people are tempted to use loud colors when they are desperate for attention from the online audience. Yes, you can get attention this way, but a different one. If you are too bright and loud, the audience will not listen to what you are saying. Here, the problem is overwhelming the visitor with colors and design. Eventually, you end up drowning your sales message and losing and perfect opportunity to sell your business. Consider using colors such as blue, grey, and white for your email. Red and orange are completely out of question.

Using Too Many Fonts
People usually make the mistake of using multiple fonts in different sections of the text. The reason for this is to attract attention. This can result into a busy and confusing design. The rule of the thumb is not to use more than two fonts. One font should be for the heading, and the other for the body.
If you must separate different sections of the message, alter the color and weight. Furthermore, italics are available if you need more sub-headings. Consider being more cautious about this and your brand strategy will be stronger.

Being Too Wordy

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You do not want to bore your audience with superfluous stuff. Unfortunately, some people do this all the time. Instead of going directly to the point to explain the core issue to the recipient, you may be tempted to tire the audience with irrelevant details. You can avoid this mistake by identifying your valuable information and going directly to it.
A point to note is that emails should be a pointer to something else. This means that emails are a teaser to the main course. Give your audience a teaser of the main thing in the mail. For the rest, give links and encourage people to follow them.

Not Making the Message Mobile-Friendly

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As of May 2014, 65 percent of email opens were on mobile devices. Going by earlier records, this trend is likely to continue for several more years. Gadgets that are more complicated are likely to continue entering the market as people move further from stationary devices. Therefore, you need to design your emails for mobile devices such as Smartphone and Tablet. Your designer can make sure that the email fits for a smaller screen apart from the conventional desktop. You should even be more committed on this because most of your competitors are already creating mobile-friendly emails.

The Ball Is In Your Court
There you have it. Setting an email campaign demands a certain degree of professionalism. While designing your email, you will need to make corrections and improvements. You can correct some of the errors by always doing a test email.

A professional yet easy-to-read design is critical for the success of any email campaign. If you make a good email, recipients will have an easier time reading it and using click-throughs. This is the basis of any email campaign.

Email campaign is an addition to the many forms of marketing available. None of these options has a one-size-fits-all solution. Therefore, make sure you try a number of layouts to see which one works best.

You may have been doing the shown by this article until today. Remember that it will take some time to make major improvements. If you follow the tips given here, your email campaign in 2015 and beyond will be exemplary.

10 Reasons Why You Must Have a Mobile Friendly Website

Business Advice, SEO Tips No Comment

If your website is still not mobile friendly, then this is the best time to switch to a mobile friendly website. Many people are now using mobile internet devices more than before. Research shows that this trend will continue for several into the future. Thus, a website that supports mobile devices is an absolute necessity.

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Source: Simplio Web Studio

Maybe the increasing number of people relying on mobile devices is not convincing enough. Still there are benefits of a mobile friendly device that you should consider. Below are 10 reasons why you must have a mobile friendly website.

1. Mobile devices can be integrated with offline media
There is the growing need to integrate offline and online media. Mobile devices are able to do this using QR codes. You can use QR codes both in print and electronic forms. This is important because sites constantly need to transfer printed information into SMS, email, or site URL.

2. Mobile Internet Usage is Growing 60
Now think about it, research suggests that come 2017, over 90 percent of people who visit the internet will do so using their phones. Therefore, this growth will affect all business that target online people. Since mobile devices are overtaking personal computers, you may want to make your website mobile friendly. You will be ready when the inevitable change eventually takes root.

3. A mobile website is more affordable than an app
Developing mobile applications can be less flexible and more costly than a mobile website. In case you decide to develop an application, the number of devices or platforms people are likely to use may determine the number of apps you need. Different phone models may all work on different types of apps. In addition, it is necessary for you to fix an app before using it, making access to your content more difficult.

Source: MaximizeSocialBusiness

4. Mobile Devices are Portable
People are looking for your information while they are on the move. They use modern gadgets. With a website suited for mobile, you have the ability to be on people’s minds and hands at all times. Try to tell them more about your products and services. People will mostly be attracted by such gestures and click away without hesitation.

5. Improves the image of your company
A better image of your company must be one of your primary goals. Yet, you can achieve this very easily by creating a mobile-friendly site. Today, sites that work well with mobile stand out. Before the visitor can even go through your product and services, your company will have impressed him or her.

Source: PBJMarketing

Source: PBJMarketing

6. Better SEO performance
As people look for your company and what you offer, which method do they use? In most cases, they will go to Google. Search engines use very intelligent algorithms these days. Google is constantly updating its algorithms, especially Google Panda and Google Penguin. The result is that the search engine starts to have preferences. Today, Google favors sites that are more mobile friendly.

7. Impressive Speeds of Downloads
Have you ever tried to open a site that is not optimized for mobile using your tablet or Smartphone? If you have, you will understand why it is necessary to have a mobile-friendly site. In most cases, a site that is not designed for mobile takes forever to load a page. In addition, it may have missing elements of the page.

8. Great experience for the user
The user, who is your prospective customer, will appreciate it if he or she reaches you in the simplest way possible. A mobile-friendly website enhances the experience of the user. This is because the site design suits handheld components in terms of screen size. The user is able to surf at his comfort in an easy manner. Since the customers are satisfied, they create a positive image of your company.

9. You will get the elusive competitive advantage
Today, not all companies have adopted mobile-optimized sites. This means that some of your competitors are still using the older types that do not give clients the best experience. With a mobile-friendly site, you will be several steps ahead of your competition that lacks such a site.

10. Engagement with people is more effective
One more awesome thing about a mobile-friendly site is that it helps you to interact with users through mobile-specific components. You are able to use mapping and click-to-call functions to your advantage.

If you are looking to acquire more leads for your business, you cannot run away from a mobile-friendly site. The world of online interaction is changing at a rocket speed and you do not have the luxury of lagging behind. However, you can still stay ahead of the curve and remain profitable. Developing a mobile-friendly website is the best way to keeping the online environment favorable to your business.
All you have to do is contact an expert to analyze your site and optimize to the next level. Request a quote and consultation today for a more profitable business.

Google Makes SSL a Ranking Factor

SEO Tips No Comment

Earlier this month, Google has announced a new way to give your website a minor ranking boost and that is through HTTPS or adding a SSL 2048-bit key certificate on your site.

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Although it helps with boosting ranks, Google implied that this has only very small benefits only counting as a “very lightweight signal” within the overall ranking algorithm.

According to Google says it has an impact on “fewer than 1% of global queries” but said there is a possibility that they “may decide to strengthen” the signal because Google wants to “encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.”

At the SMX West, Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts has expressed his desire to make SSL as a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. After five months, what he said he wanted was finally made reality by Google.

Websites like MOZ has already released some SEO tips for SSL. Below are the SEO advantages of switching to HTTPS.

  1. More referrer data
  2. HTTPS as a rankings boost
  3. Security and privacy

There are, of course, challenges to overcome with HTTPS:

  1. Mistakes happen
  2. Speed issues
  3. Costs
  4. Not everything is ready for HTTPS

There are also some concerns with regards to this change. You need to take the proper steps to ensure your traffic doesn’t suffer. You need to make sure to communicate to Google that you moved your site from HTTP to HTTPS.

Google promises to release more documentation in the future, but for now has provided the following tips:

  1. Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
  2. Use 2048-bit key certificates
  3. Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
  4. Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
  5. Check out our site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address
  6. Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
  7. Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag.

So, should you be concerned so much with changing HTTP to HTTPS site for SEO purposes? Below are some reactions of people on this Google announcement about making SSL a ranking factor.

If you need help in applying a site wide SSL to your website, please let us know, we can help you.

Source: SearchEngineland, MOZ

Does Your Small Business Really Need a Website?

Business Advice No Comment

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Today, it is common for people to think about running their own business, and small businesses have been sprouting in many places. These businesses have a wide range of goods and services and often rely on word of mouth first to gain more clients. A lot of them also rely on their social media accounts to boost their sales. But are these enough to keep a small business going? In this digital age where almost anyone can be online, is it a good idea to set up an official website for a small business? The answer is simple yet may have some complexities: it will all depend on you – the business owner. A lot of considerations must be made when thinking of setting up a website for your business, but if you know your business well, you can readily know what to do.

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First, think about the costs. Making a website often has 3 main costs: its development, hosting, and registration of the domain name. Website development is often the most costly as it means putting together its content: text, graphics, links, and codes. Hosting a website means having a server that is large enough to store the website’s files so they can be reached by the public when they go online. Registering the site’s domain name is the cheapest as it just means getting a unique web address through a public registry. Extra costs may include email services, Internet marketing, and maintenance of the website.

services

Next, review the products you sell or services you offer. Even if you do not sell anything online, are they stuff that people would search for? For example, you are a distributor of popular branded clothes. Often, there are customers who would search for sellers of the brands they prefer in their local area. When this happens, will your items appear in the customers’ search or will your competitors’ offerings be the ones they will see? Or let’s say you run a restaurant. Travel itineraries are often made by searching for places to eat way before a trip happens. If travelers cannot find information about your restaurant, how can it become a go-to dining place?

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Third, not all people are tech-savvy and using a computer may be a challenge for some. Are you one of them or are you willing enough to learn even just the basics of modern technology? Even if you can hire someone to set up and maintain a website, you must know something about computers and the Internet to at least convey what you want to include in your site or how it would look.

customers

Fourth, you must check who your customers are. You need to identify whether or not a lot of them know much when it comes to using the Internet. There are still people who do not use computers, but there are higher chances of having more clients who are up-to-date when it comes to technology. However, even if there are more people who have Internet access, you will only benefit from that fact if they can find your website.

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Fifth, if you think that setting up a website is an advertising tool for your business, think again. A website is not an advertising tool; it exists to support your advertising efforts. You pay for advertisements to be posted, seen, heard, or read for a certain amount of time, after which, they are put down unless you pay for them again, and the cycle goes on. Make a website if you wish to run your own marketing tool that you can use continuously since it belongs to you. You can also use a website to show the testimonials you have received from customers who are pleased with your products or services. People often seek out reviews when considering potential purchases. Plus a website can also be a way for your customers to do window shopping but online, and if they see something they like, you can expect more sales to come in.

Sixth, aside from being a tool to market your goods or services, a website can also serve as a tool for your clients to share their needs, suggest something, or comment on other things that can help your business improve. Even if you have an actual store, it most likely operates within a certain time frame. A website, on the other hand can be reached 24/7. You can have your website customized with a chat support system at certain times or have a contact page that consumers can go to in case they have any questions, reservations, clarifications, etc.

Generally, big or small businesses can benefit from having a website as it can make them more competitive and allow the buying public to get to know them more and what they offer.

Why You Must Have a Business Plan

Business Advice No Comment

These days, having your own business can be better than just being an employee. With the right capital and attitude, you may be on your way to reaching financial freedom. Moreover, it is also advisable to have a business plan for you to be guided on how you envision your business to be. A business plan is not just about planning; it may be the key that will open a lot of opportunities for you and your business.

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First of all, having a business plan allows you to set specific objectives. This is especially true for managers so they can establish what will happen to the business. These objectives must be tracked and followed through and your business plan can help you do those. Having clearly defined objectives will make you organize, plan, and strategize well.

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Aside from priorities and strategies, a business plan also allows you to share your action points with the people you love. Yes, you should not just share them with your business partners and colleagues; your partner, significant other, or spouse may help you in ways you would not expect. By sharing your business plan with them, you can improve your communication skills, which you can also apply when running your business.

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As your business grows, you will need to consider if it is necessary for you to expand its location. Do you need to rent a bigger office space? Rent is usually a fixed cost and the bigger the space, the bigger the rent. Having a business plan can help you analyze your growth prospects and budget so you can decide whether or not it is okay to have this increased fixed cost.

hiring-sign

Aside from possible increased rent, you will also need to think about hiring new people as your business expands. This can be a risk, yet it is also a duty if you want your business to expand further.  Your business plan can make you clearly determine the logic behind hiring new employees and identifying the roles they will have to help your business grow. In addition, training new employees can be smoother and easier if your business plan addresses this aspect.

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Another thing to consider is buying or leasing assets. How many should be purchased or leased? How much are you willing to spend buying or leasing them? How long will you use them and how important are they in running your business? These questions you ask and more can be answered by your business plan as it can be your guide in deciding what will happen to your business assets in the future.

corporate-handshake

One of your business goals is to develop new alliances. Use your business plan to find and communicate with potential partners who can help in the expansion and further development of your business. Include the standards or criteria you’ll be looking for to find alliances that are compatible for your business or those who have the same vision as yours.

Aside from alliances, you would also want to have investors. Usually, investors want to see a company’s business plan first before they decide to invest in it. Having investors is great for any business because they can help increase revenues, so make sure that your business plan is clear and complete. Convince them that your business is worth investing in.

loan-approved

Just like with investors, a good business plan is also needed to convince lenders to grant you a business loan. They expect you to have a plan on how to earn back and pay the money you will be owing them, as well as back-up plans in case any problems turn up.

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Whatever kind of business you have, one thing is for sure: you want it to sell. Whether you are selling goods or offering services, you want to eventually have patrons who will keep your business afloat and boost your sales. Therefore, having a business plan can aid in making your clients understand what you have to offer, how much it’s worth, and why they should have it. In short, your business plan can be a good marketing tool if made properly.

One way to know that your business is growing is if you start to think of having another business, related or otherwise. Use a business plan to know the steps you need to take to make your new venture successful. What do you need to do? What resources will you need? How many people do you plan to hire? Your business plan will highlight the factors you need to consider to start a new business.

You must have a business plan to help your business grow. Strategize well and prioritize the distribution & allocation of your resources with great care. After all, you would not want your business to be stagnant, would you?

What you need to know about Webmaker – Mozilla’s latest project

Web Design Tips, What's New No Comment

Mozilla is known as a large community of builders, thinkers and technologists from around the world. Its projects have always been user-oriented. Mozilla is best-known for its extremely popular Firefox, Thunderbird and FireZilla projects. However, it is also developing other project such as Persona which provides users with a much better and easier way to sign in to various websites.

Webmaker

Mozilla has also launched a new project recently, called Webmaker. This seems like a very promising thing with a big future ahead of it. Webmaker is again made with users in mind and it aims to help people create cool things on the web regardless of their coding knowledge. According to their own words, the idea is to help people understand how the web works and use that knowledge to make a web with no limits.

But what does Webmaker offer?

The things that people can take advantage of with Webmaker are divided into three sections:

  1. Tools

This is one of the best things about Webmaker. For now it only offers 4 tools that people can use, but we can expect the list to grow very soon. Each tool gives people the option to create something from scratch or remake something that someone else has published. Here are the 4 tools you can play with:

  • X-Ray Goggles

Have you even clicked the right button and then “Inspect Element”? This tool is similar, except it shows you the elements of any web page in real time when you hover over them with your mouse. Needless to say, you can edit each of those elements to your liking and even publish the page that you have edited.

  • Thimble

Thimble lets you create your own HTML web pages and work on the CSS right from the browser in a quick and easy way. It shows you the results of the code you are writing in real time and you can host and share all of your projects with a couple of clicks.

  • Popcorn Maker

With Popcorn Maker, everyone can edit web videos, images and audio and embed the end product anywhere they like. You can use this tool to drag and drop all kinds of content from around the web, combine, cut and skip parts of videos, add different layers of audio and much more from your browser.

  • Appmaker

Perhaps the best of the 4 tools, Appmaker allows you to create your own mobile apps with simple drag and drop actions. This is extremely easy to use even if you have absolutely no coding knowledge at all. With this tool you just drag different “bricks” from simple headers and buttons to more advanced chat rooms and media players and drop them on the screen of a mobile device. It’s as easy as that.

Webmaker

  1. Resources

Webmaker offers much more than just 4 tools. People who want to learn or learn how to teach can use the many available resources which include useful and easy to understand information about web mechanics, security, design and accessibility, coding/scripting, collaborating, sharing and more.

Webmaker Event

  1. Events

On the Events page of the Webmaker website people can find out about different events around the world and how they can join. Currently there are 2,098 events and you can either search for one or create one of your own. These events are also known as Maker Parties and they are all about celebrating the web. People who join such Parties will be able to learn anything from making a video on the web to why privacy matters.

Overall, Mozilla has started another great project and we can only imagine what it has in store for us. Webmaker is already a lot of fun and offers people with minimal or no coding knowledge at all to learn something new and basically to understand the web.

How to create a logo that works

Business Advice, Web Design Tips No Comment

Starting a new company is always a challenging task and somewhere in the chaos of things you will have to find some time to create a logo. Of course, you are not a designer, but you will have to tell the person who will be creating your logo exactly what you want. And even the best designer won’t be able to save you if you want something that’s just not nice.

What it Takes to Create a Good Logo?

One of the most important things for your logo is that it should work on all kinds of platforms. In order to create that, you should be able to work with your designer. Here are some tips that will help you to make the right requests for the best result:

Create a logo that is readable

  1. Readability

Creating a custom font for your logo nowadays is easy. However, sometimes these custom fonts are extremely hard to read and that’s a big mistake when it comes to creating logos. Your custom font might be beautiful to look at, but your slogan or brand name should be readable. Otherwise, the text will just take space and you might as well not write anything at all.

keep-it-simple

  1. Simplicity

Simplicity is at the core of modern day design and more specifically logo design. Creating a logo with intricate patterns might indeed look good, but your logo is not a painting. It has to do a certain type of job – tell people who you are at a glance. A simple logo that is clear, crisp and easy to understand is what you should aim for. If you can’t describe your logo in a sentence, it is probably too complicated and you should think of another design. Keep in mind that vector graphics usually work best for logo design.

Scalability

  1. Scalability

The size of a logo can be a tricky subject. Many logos look great when they are being viewed as big illustrations, but when you scale them down they become unreadable and unrecognizable. Your logo should be designed in such a way that it looks as great on billboards as it does as a favicon.

Color wheel to create a logo

  1. Colors

Choosing the colors for your logo is a very important process and most times it is best to let your designer do that for you. Most designers will make sure that the logo they are creating also looks great in grayscale, but another thing you will need to consider is if your logo looks good in a single color.

Don't follow trends to create a logo that works

  1. Don’t be trendy

Following the latest trends when creating a logo is a very bad idea. This means that you will end up with a logo that will be very popular for a short period of time and it might not work 5 years from now (or even 1). You can still adapt your logo so that it looks modern, but make sure the core design can stand the tests of time.

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  1. Negative space

Negative space is one of the best vector design elements that you can use for your logo. By using negative space you will be able to convey many different messages in a subtle way. Great examples of companies and organizations that make use of negative space in their logos include Girl Scouts of America, Guild of Food Writers and FedEx.

There are definitely many things that you will need to be careful with when creating a logo. It is a process which is actually more difficult than many people realize, but if you follow these basic guidelines, your logo will always make a good impression and won’t be easily forgotten. Don’t fall into the trap of bad logo design and most importantly – think outside the box. Your designer is only as good as your ideas.

Why Is Typography So Important For Web Design?

Web Design Tips No Comment

For laymen, the terms “typography” and “font” are not much different. In fact, these two terms are often used by the people interchangeably. However, for the graphic designer there is a lot more than fonts to typography. It is a whole science in itself and it plays a vital role in web design as well. In the last few years, web designers have started to recognize the importance of typography and the latest trends have affirmed its leading role in modern design.

If you think typography is all about choosing the font that looks the prettiest, you are totally wrong. It is way more than that.

So, what is it exactly?

Robert Bringhurst, a Canadian typographer, describes typography in his book as “the craft of human language with a durable visual form”. Ellen Lupton puts it in a similar way, but with simpler words: “Typography is what language looks like.”

In simple words, typography is the technique and art of arranging type. That includes each possible element which can affect the web design, like typeface choice, color palette, point size, line length, design integration and layout among others.

This leads us to the next question:

What is its purpose?

Due to the fact that typography is so closely bonded with web design, many people suffer the misconception that its purpose is to make the site beautiful. A reason for that could be the fact that people link the term “design” to making certain things look beautiful, as is the case with interior design, and this misconception is transferred to typography as well.

They are wrong. The main purpose of typography has nothing to do with beauty. It is actually readability that typography aims at. This does not mean that it should not look pretty at the same time, but this is just an added bonus. The main goal that stands before the typographer is to make sure that the type is readable.

So, why is typography so important, then?

An average 95% of every website is occupied by content. And typography is the art of displaying content. So that makes it pretty important, don’t you think?

But putting the math aside, the sad fact is that there is still a common notion among many web designers that typography is all about pretty fonts and web design is all about fancy graphics. This oversimplification can really play a nasty trick on you. Even design professionals seem to forget sometimes that content is what brings visitors to a website and again, content is what keeps them on a website, and that content has to be easy to perceive.

Here we have gathered five reasons why typography should not be taken lightly and should be given its due importance.

  1. Typography communicates the website’s visual summary

When taking a look at a website, you can often say even from the first glance whether it is a fun or a serious, business-like vibe that it is sending out. A large part of this message is achieved through typography.

The layout and look of the website are complemented by the choice of colors and fonts and the way the content is arranged on the page to evoke certain feelings and emotions into the visitors. Just a quick glance of the page is enough to either grab your audience’s attention or drive them away for good.

  1. It carries your brand forward

You don’t believe that typography plays a part in branding? Then you should try this simple experiment out: Take a well-known brand and change its typeface and font. Then look at it again. Doesn’t that change your whole perception of that brand? Doesn’t it look out of balance?

A brand is largely defined by its logo. It is what establishes the brand’s identity among the users. There is no second opinion about that. However, if you have a great logo and don’t complement it with adequate web typography, you won’t go a long way as a brand. If, on the other hand, your font, logo and typeface go hand in hand harmoniously, then you have a winner!

  1. Typography guides the readers through your content

Good content is not enough for building a great website. It should be well presented, too. The solution to that task is typography. Every element can have its impact on the way your content is perceived – starting from the size and font of the text all the way to its alignment and arrangement on your pages and the colors you’ll select. Good typography will emphasize on the most important parts of your content and draw the readers’ attention to them, and it will also define the whole structure and flow of your website.

This is especially evident in the cases when you are reading articles on the internet. If you have a 1500-word post before you, which consists entirely of plain text, you will really have a hard time reading through the whole post, even if the topic is very interesting. On the other hand, even small tweaks and formatting like changing the font size, color or typeface of certain parts of the content can make the article a lot more easily readable and hold your attention right till the end of it.

  1. It can make content look attractive

Don’t get this the wrong way; this doesn’t mean that typography can turn bad content into good one. Content with no intrinsic value won’t be able to engage the viewers even if it is clad in the best typography. It may make the visitors take a look at it, but they will quickly reveal the deception and move away from your website.

However, even the most well written and clever content will look ridiculous if you just paste it on your page in 11 point neon green Times New Roman or, God forbid, Comic Sans. In that line of thought, if you have fairly decent copy, you can enhance its appeal through the use of adequate typography and make the readers feel compelled to read it.

  1. When done right, typography maintains the website’s consistency

The internet users are inclined to look for familiarity and order when they visit a website. Thus, your site should have a consistent design that won’t prompt your visitors to wander about looking for the navigation button they need or the contact information, which is hidden somewhere in the small print. Inconsistency and chaos make for a frustrating user experience and the visitors will most likely not come back to your site if they are faced with that kind of experience even once.

Good typography can help you out in this aspect as well. It straightens the site up and tidies things up so that all of its elements will be clearly visible and easy to find for the users. When uniformity is maintained throughout all the visual elements of a web page, such as typeface, font, color, size, etc., the user experience becomes much more pleasant, thus boosting the conversion rates too.

 

You can’t deny the fact that typography is capable of shaping the perception of your website’s visitors and engaging them with your web pages. It can also affect your conversion rates and play a major role for the effective content delivery to your users. You should abandon the obsession with “pretty” content and aesthetics and instead focus on the clever use of typography, as it is a powerful tool which can do wonders for your website. Go by the words of the famous type designer Matthew Carter, “…type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.

 

The 12 Ground Rules of Web Design

Developers, Web Design Tips No Comment

Whether you decide to create your website on your own or to collaborate with a web designer in the process, there are certain basic rules that your web design should follow in order for your site to be user-friendly and for the visitors to want to come back to it. This is especially vital for business websites, as the online visibility is one of the most crucial components of brand management in today’s world. Here we have listed out the twelve must-have components of every good web design.

  1. Take your target audience into account. You may be tempted to use a theme that you like, but you should first think of whether it is appropriate for the content you will be displaying and the way your audience is going to perceive it.
  2. Your website should look professional. Make sure there are no spelling and grammatical errors, poor quality graphics or broken links anywhere on the site. “Under construction” pages also look bad in the eyes of the viewers. With the tools you have at your disposal today, there is really no excuse for such issues on your site.
  3. Quick loading time – there is nothing more annoying for a visitor than waiting for a page to load forever. Your website should load almost instantly. Large graphics and flash presentations can really slow your site down and they don’t work well on iPhones and iPads anyway. Keep these things in mind and work on your site’s loading time, if you don’t want your visitors to lose interest and go elsewhere.
  4. Your website should be easily readable. Do not use light text on a light background or dark one on a dark background, or very tiny fonts, as that will only frustrate your visitors and make them leave your site more quickly.
  5. Use a standard and popular program or platform of a current version to design your site, like the WordPress platform. The more common program your web designer uses, the higher the chances that it will still look good when newer browser versions are released. That will also make your site easier to maintain and update as the people you entrust that task with will be more likely to have the necessary skills.
  6. It is best not to use flash intros, music, flashing banners or scrolling marquees unless absolutely necessary for communicating the core message of your website. Otherwise they will just annoy the visitors and waste their time. If you can add “audio on/off” or “skip intro” buttons this is the first sign that you can do without these elements.
  7. Go easy on the colors. Use them sparingly and make sure they harmonize well. The same rule applies to the fonts on your site – stick to a maximum of two or three fonts.
  8. Easy navigation – although you may be tempted to use unlabeled active areas, disappearing menus and buttons without any descriptive text on your website, as they may look cool, the chances are that your visitors will be frustrated by them and will lose interest in browsing your site further.

Test your site with a small audience representing your target visitors, before you publish it online. Check their feedback on the layout and design of the navigation and see if they had any difficulties in using it. Doing this in the course of the development of the site can spare you some tedious and costly changes afterwards.

  1. Use consistent navigation designs and page layouts throughout the entire site. Visitors tend to get really annoyed when they cannot find the navigation link on the same place where it was on the previous pages. And some may not be able to find the link at all.
  2. Make sure you have all the legal rights of the design, fonts and images you are about to use on your website. Copyright infringement is the last thing you would want to deal with – it may not only cause you to pay money but may also bring your site really bad publicity.
  3. There are currently numerous web browsers and platforms in use. While you may find it hard to get your website to look perfect on them all, you should focus on making it look good on the most commonly used ones that the majority of web users rely on, like the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, etc.

Also, keep in mind the rapidly growing trend of mobile device browsing and design a special mobile-friendly version of your site that will run well on Android, iOS and Windows devices with different screen resolutions. This involves a lot of hard labor but an experienced web design specialist should not have any problems in making your site compatible with multiple platforms.

  1. You should understand that the design of your site will never be over and done. In order to make visitors come back and check your site again and again, you should make sure that you provide them with information that is up-to-date and relevant and brings value to the readers. Outdated information, lack of any new content and broken links are a recipe for disaster as these will cause your visitors and perhaps potential customers to lose interest and maybe never come back to your site again. This issue can be addressed with a well structured blog and content marketing strategy, but that is a theme for another post altogether.

Web design is no child’s play. It involves a lot of expertise and requires you to factor in a lot of different aspects. You should address the process of creating your website seriously and professionally in order to get good results and proper visibility.

 

Responsive Web Design: Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Developers No Comment

In the last few years, the mobile market has gained momentum very rapidly and the percentage of mobile searches has grown tremendously. By 2015, the number of searches made through mobile devices is expected to surpass the number of desktop queries and by 2016, in the U.S. local search market alone, the mobile queries are expected to exceed the desktop ones by a staggering 27.8 billion searches.

This upward mobile use trend includes not only traffic that comes in from searches, but also emails and social media, which have enjoyed a steady growth in popularity in the past few years. If you have thought you could ignore mobile traffic, the above data should quickly prove you wrong. You cannot afford to miss out on the traffic coming in from mobile users.

At the end of 2013, some websites have registered that close to 25% of their traffic was coming from mobile devices – mainly smartphones and tablets. However, websites designed for desktop viewing do not work that well with mobile devices. This calls for developing a more mobile-friendly version of your website.

What Are Your Options

If you run a small business, when it comes to displaying your website on mobile platforms there are actually three options you can turn to. You can choose to do nothing with your web design, you can develop a fully mobile dedicated website or you can incorporate responsive web design elements into your existing website. Let’s take a look at these options and see what effects they will have on your website and traffic.

Do Nothing

The web browsers are highly advanced today. You will hardly find a website today that is perfect and doesn’t have any errors in its code, even minor ones, and yet the browsers are smart enough to work around these errors and display the web pages correctly. They even work quite decently with displaying websites that are not optimized for mobile viewing on tablets and other mobile devices.

So, even if your site is not mobile optimized, it will most probably still be displayed correctly on mobile platforms. However, the user experience will be terrible. The desktop version of your site is built for a much bigger screen resolution than the ones of the common mobile devices and all content and links will appear very small, which will require the user to zoom in, in order to be able to read your site. This will often annoy users and make them leave your website very quickly, thus lowering your conversion rates.

Build a Separate Mobile Version of Your Site

Websites that are displayed on the browsers of mobile devices with an URL like m.example.com are actually separate websites created with the purpose of being viewed on mobile platforms only.

The benefit of this option is that it allows you to create a much better user experience for the people who browse your site through their mobiles. These sites have larger buttons and are more easily readable. Furthermore, you can rearrange the most important parts of the navigation like the contact info, etc. in such a way that it will be easier for the mobile users to find it.

But there is a downside to this option, too. You will actually have to maintain two separate websites – one desktop version and one mobile version. This doubles your efforts of updating the data on your site. Furthermore, the mobile version can be optimized for either tablets or smartphones, but not both.

You have to be extremely careful; otherwise you may commit mistakes that will harm your website’s search engine performance and cost you traffic. Google in particular does not tolerate broken pages or incorrectly mapped redirects, which are common issues with mobile dedicated websites.

Responsive Web Design

Finally, we come to the third option you have at your disposal for displaying your site on mobile devices. Through incorporating advanced CSS and HTML coding, responsive design can automatically adapt your website’s layout to the screen resolution of the device on which it is displayed. This way, your site visitors can get an optimal user experience regardless of whether they view your site from a desktop, a tablet or a smartphone.

Although designing a responsive website takes a bit of an effort, it fixes the common issues with mobile sites – you have only one website to take care of and there are no redirects that can go wrong. If a responsive website is designed correctly, it can combine the benefits of desktop and mobile dedicated sites. For the mobile users, you may choose to display important data like your contact info or a map in an easily accessible location, like with the mobile dedicated sites. Well built responsive websites are powerful and flexible and that is why this is the best option you can choose out of the three.

Conclusion

The growing mobile use requires from you to be flexible with your business website, too, even if you own a small business. Responsive web design is your best bet in order to achieve a satisfying user experience for both users who browse through their desktop computers and those who use their mobile devices for surfing the internet. It may require some effort on your part initially, but in the long run it will be much easier and cheaper to maintain than supporting two separate websites for mobile and desktop users.

 

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