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How Will Responsive Web Design Develop in 2014?

29 April,2014 Developers, Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

2013 was widely deemed as the “Year of Responsive Web Design”And indeed, 2013 saw a massive rise in the popularity of responsive design with even major sites like those of Mashable and Times Magazine, not to mention thousands of others, adopting the responsive design philosophy. In 2013, responsive design clearly went mainstream and it has now reached a point, where it has become the thing that consumers and designers expect to see.

Image source: infocux Technologies – https://www.flickr.com/photos/infocux/8240904818

2013 was also a great year for responsive design tools with the coming out of Foundation 4 in February, followed by Bootstrap 3 in August and Foundation 5 shortly after that. Yahoo released their Pure in May, entering the big game, while Thoughtbot has been continuously developing their Bourbon Neat. We saw the rise of new polyfills, plugins and practices. With such powerful tools, building responsive websites has become much easier.

With such rapid development in 2013, we can’t help but wonder what 2014 will bring for responsive web design.

Responsive Design Will Get Smarter

In 2014, our knowledge and understanding about building and optimizing websites for any type of device will become much deeper and more comprehensive. Responsive sites have been the victims of a number of optimization issues of different complexity, but with the improvement of the tools available, the developers are now starting to form a system of good practices and standards. Elements such as the off-canvass panels and the “hamburger” navigation icon that has now become ubiquitous are gaining popularity and now work pretty responsively.

With the new plugins and tools, elements such as the selective loading of media and assets, the device capability detection and the optimization for hardware and speed will all become more easily understandable and much less difficult to implement.

Improved Device Recognition

It has always been hard to pin down the device classes, but the common separation of mobiles, tablets and desktop computers will be totally shattered in 2014. There are already devices on the market that fall somewhere between the common definition of a tablet and a phone, or a tablet and a desktop computer. Furthermore, now there is also a whole new range of devices added to all those like smartwatches, the Google Glass and the like and who knows, perhaps we will finally see the Apple iWatch this year, too. Add to that the smart TVs and all the other home media devices with web connection capabilities and you will end up with a huge number of device types and categories, which often overlap and intertwine.

With all that in mind, responsive design is already taking the first steps towards true device agnosticism. By the end of the year, we will see significant development in this direction. This trend means that designers can make plans even for devices that are not invented yet and they can accommodate a range of specific device constraints and capabilities.

More Advanced Frameworks

Our predictions will be incomplete if we don’t examine what 2014 holds in store for the responsive design frameworks, like Bootstrap and Foundation, for instance. The area that will have the greatest opportunities for development in 2014 will be the complex tools that include a lot of components and input means and also trickier to display data models. Up till now, responsive web design has been implemented predominantly in content and marketing sites, while complex apps have taken a backseat.

However, many designers are already working in that direction and rebuilding their apps (product apps etc.) on responsive frameworks in order to be more flexible and responsive. The developers of the major responsive design frameworks are also recognizing this trend and incorporating numerous web app centered components into their products. This will surely make the building of complex apps a lot easier and more straightforward.

 

If 2013 was a great year for responsive web design, 2014 will be even bigger. With all the ongoing development and improvement in the device recognition capabilities, the flexibility, and the available framework and with the constant enhancements in the knowledge about responsive design, we are eagerly waiting to see what more 2014 has in store for us all!

 

How to Select a Graphic Designer – Tips to Adhere to

27 April,2014 Managers, Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

In a recent inquiry about the areas in which businesses struggle most, there was a prevailing response received from a large number of small business owners. If you think that this was social media or marketing, etc. then you are in for a surprise. The area in which small businesses most commonly face hurdles and feel most disoriented is hiring a graphic designer. Small business owners often feel out of their comfort zone when it comes to selecting a professional to design their logos, printed materials and website design elements, and they are often left unsatisfied with the final results. To prevent this scenario, here are a few tips to stick to when choosing a graphic designer for your business needs.

Image source: University of Salford – https://www.flickr.com/photos/salforduniversity/8424131760

Hire a professional

As much as you may be tempted to engage a relative or a student to create your design, always prefer hiring a professional! A professional designer is the only person who is well versed enough with the ever-changing technology and will know the right software to be used for each specific type of design requirement. For example, T-shirt and billboard industries do not use the Adobe Creative Suite but instead rely on other software products.

Your chosen designer should have ample knowledge of computers, web and print production and the compatibility of different software solutions. For instance, the products of Apple do not run Flash.

Remember that if something looks good on the computer screen it will not necessarily look good when printed out. Thus, the professional you hire should be well versed with all the aspects of the graphic design.

Know what you want and give examples

Before even setting out on a search for a designer, you should determine what exactly you need. If you give your graphic designer only vague suggestions, you are most likely not going to be satisfied with the final product and you will have to start all over again.

Providing examples can be of great help in this regard. You can find sources or website that have a look and feel similar to what you are aiming to achieve for your design. These will be a good starting point that will aid both you and the designer in the process.

Draw a preliminary frame

This directly corresponds with the above tip. Even a very basic mockup or sketch will go a long way in putting you and the graphic designer you have chosen to work with on the same page prior to starting the project. This is also an easier way to clear your thoughts and expectations from your desired graphic design. This is even more useful if you are engaged in a large-scale project, for instance a website, as it will also give an insight into the user experience.

Asses the way the designers present their own work

Before making a final selection of the graphic designer or agency you will engage to do your job, take a look at the way they present their own work. If they are taking great care in projecting a professional appearance, they will most likely exercise the same attention to detail when working on your project, too.

Also, always select an artist who has enough experience in the specific type of design work you need them for. Choose a professional whose design style corresponds with the one you need (note that we say need and not want, as what you want may not necessarily fit your target audience’s needs). This approach has an added bonus, too – when the designer is working within their comfort zone, the results are always more impressive.

Take care of the ownership rights

Always ensure that all the ownership rights of the graphic design you pay for and the source files are transferred to your name in the end. Also, never hesitate to ask for a written agreement with the designer. It is a crucial rule to have the entire legal rights of ownership to your design, be it a logo, a print design or a web design, because that shields you from legal actions and allows you to use the graphic content in any way you see fit in the future.

Do you have any experience in dealing with a graphic designer? Do you have any other tips to share?

 

11 Elements That Your Website’s Design Should Not Lack In 2014

20 April,2014 Developers, Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

There is no way to give a single answer to the question “What makes a good site?” However, attractive, purposeful and clear yet functional design plays a major role for the success and effectiveness of a website. It is not as easy and straightforward to achieve all those things simultaneously as some people may believe, and maintaining the balance among them can be even harder. With the ever-evolving web design field and the ever-changing customer tastes, it is essential to run with the trends in order to stay relevant. Here, we have tried to list out the elements that your website should definitely have in 2014 in order to stay up to date.

Image source: Joseph.Morris – https://www.flickr.com/photos/josephmorris/11487494906

  1. Simplicity

A cluttered and overdone website is the easiest way to scare off the visitors and make them close the tab with your website. Forbes has ranked simplicity as one of the major trends in web design for 2014. Clean and simple design is the most ‘in’ thing right now and by the look of it, this trend will continue to grow steadily throughout the year. If you think that keeping your website simple will lead to a plain, bland or boring design, you are totally wrong. Minimalism is a whole art category in itself. Simplicity can yield an aesthetically pleasing and impressive site and at the same time, the uncluttered design can be perfectly complemented by a clean, easy to access and use navigation. You don’t have to use excessive design and visual elements just for the sake of it. Instead, avoid the information and visual overload by keeping in mind the actual message of your website at all times.

  1. Flat Design

This is another major trend that is seeing a rise in 2014. Avoid 3D and over-the-top visuals and stick to a flat layout instead. The redesign of Apple iOS has played a major role for the popularity of this trend and flat design is quickly turning into the most sought-after design form. In short, this design method relies on sleek looks and clean interface with more neutral and subtle colors and less complicated layouts. A fine example of good flat design is Winamp’s website.

  1. Maximize the User Experience

The best user experience is your ultimate goal when designing a website. Today, the primary thing that users want when they land on a website is to be able to access and utilize the services or information that they need easily and quickly. This is one of the reasons why, as we already mentioned in the first point, minimalistic design is so widely preferred these days. When you are composing and designing your website, make sure that the things which people will need can be seen clearly and that nothing on the site will cause confusion or distraction, even to the visitors with limited experience in computer use.

  1. Easy User Registration

In our fast-paced world, no one has time for long registration forms. Obtaining the contact information and building mailing lists of your customers or visitors is as vital as ever, but you should keep your registration forms easy to access and fill. Instead of prompting your visitors to go out of their way in order to sign up for your updates, for instance (which will most likely make them lose patience and give up), try to incorporate your user registration form somewhere on a main page of your site or use a pop-up where they would simply have to enter their email address. Try to add some benefit to subscribing for your newsletters, too.

  1. Go Big, Go Bold

You should keep your site’s fonts, text and typography big and bold. When you stick to this rule, everything will stand out (especially when well combined with a simple design), you will capture the attention of your visitors and this will also improve the readability for the ones browsing your site through mobile devices. If your visitors have to squint or zoom in to be able to read your content, they will soon be tired and annoyed and may decide to leave your site. Prevent that through the use of bold and distinctive typography.

  1. Mobile Compatibility

With the number of people who use their smartphones for accessing the Internet constantly rising, you should ensure that your website is easily readable on mobile devices; otherwise you may lose a lot of traffic, and revenue too. You should keep the use of Flash to a minimum and test your website’s compatibility with different devices, both mobile and desktop ones. Responsive web design is your best bet in this regard, as it can cater to multiple device types with just one website.

  1. Videos

Videos can put across messages and ideas as well as present products much more effectively than text and static images. They also do that a lot more quickly and engage the viewers more successfully. They break the monotony of the web page and studies have shown that people get bored more easily when they have to go through large sections of text as compared to watching a video with a few minutes’ length.

  1. Incorporate Animations

When properly done, animations can play a great role in communicating a particular message or idea or presenting a product to the users. Furthermore, it is not necessary that they should take up too much space on your website. A clever animation which is well blended in with the other sections of your site can also aid you in gaining or holding the attention of the visitors without looking too promotional or sales-oriented.

  1. Fast Loading Pages

If you place big amounts of content and large files on your pages, they will take a lot longer to load. Apart from being impractical, this is also annoying, and today people don’t have the time or patience to wait long for web pages to load.

  1. Fixed Navigation Toolbar

This particular element has a huge role to play for the usability of your website. Use a fixed navigation toolbar to keep everything straightforward. Make sure the navigation stays at the top of the page all the time in order for people to be able to easily navigate around your website and find whatever they are looking for without much effort. Users don’t like to spend much time looking for the desired navigation button. Organize your site navigation cleverly and do not overstuff it with categories.

  1. Clearly Visible Contact Information

It is utterly annoying to struggle to locate a company’s contact information and it has been proven that people are inclined to give up on this task pretty quickly in case they cannot find the contact info at a glance. Don’t make your visitors exert efforts in order to find your contact information. Keep it clearly visible; it is best to ensure that you have it or a link to it included on each one of your website’s pages.

In Conclusion

We have gathered just a few tips to help you get started with your web design. There is a lot more to learn along the way. You should keep a close watch on the design trends and the developments in the field. Also, don’t forget to put yourself in the users’ shoes and keep improving the user experience for maximum satisfaction of your visitors.

 

5 Strong Reasons to Embrace Responsive Web Design in 2014

18 April,2014 Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

If you haven’t given a thought to adopting responsive web design yet, it is high time that you did. If you want to keep up with the web design trends and not lag behind your competitors, you should seriously consider building a responsive site for your business. Here are the five most important reasons that should convince you to take this decision.

Image source: Philippe Martin – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lafabriquedeblogs/8589066773

 

 

 

 

  1. Google Recommends It!

You could not think of a stronger reason to convince you to embrace responsive design. Ever since 2012, when Google first recommended the use of responsive design, this design technique has gained the reputation of the best way to optimize websites for smartphone viewing. Responsive sites use the same HTML and have only one URL, unlike separate mobile and desktop site versions. What this means for Google is that its bots can crawl and index the content of your site easily. This alone should be reason enough to adopt responsive design today!

  1. Lower Bounce Rate

In case a visitor lands onto your website and returns to the search engine result page immediately after that, without viewing any other page of your site, in the eyes of Google your site will not be considered the best match for the query that the visitor has made. If the visitor reaches your site through a mobile device and the site is not easy to view and navigate, this bounce rate is expected to be higher.

However, when you incorporate responsive design elements into your website, the CSS values will change based on the device the site is viewed from. This will significantly lower the bounce rate. And given the fact that close to 28% of the visitors used their mobiles to browse the internet in 2013 and by 2015 this percentage is expected to exceed the percentage of desktop viewers, you should not ignore mobile traffic and mobile optimization unless you want to lose a lot of potential customers.

  1. 1 Website = 1 SEO Campaign

If you have both a desktop version and a mobile version of your site, you are most likely managing a separate SEO campaign for each. This is no doubt a tedious task, not to mention the costs involved.

If you choose to employ responsive design, you will only have one website to take care of and you can concentrate all your SEO efforts on it. The need to promote two separate websites for mobile users and desktop users will be eliminated. This way, your link juice will flow to only one site and it will rank better. That will surely give you the upper hand on those of your competitors that have not gone responsive yet.

  1. Responsive Design Combines Redesigning and Long-Term Maintenance

Many companies are still using mobile dedicated websites as their primary websites today. However, a mobile site poses a number of maintenance issues. With the drastic change of technological trends, the design of the mobile site will require more frequent updates and maintenance procedures as compared to a site built with responsive web design. Responsive sites require much less maintenance and at the same time have a longer life.

Fluid grids combined with media queries can give your responsive design sustainability. Even though the user devices may get updated at certain intervals of time, there will rarely be any need for updates of your responsive site in order to keep up with these changes.

  1. The ROI (Return on Investment) Is Guaranteed

For all the factors listed so far, there is one outcome that they have in common and that is receiving maximum return on investment (ROI). On the contrary, if you have a non-responsive website, it will most likely be unable to compete with the websites of your rivals and thus your business’s returns will be affected negatively. In order for your business to be able to grow and gain a bigger market share, you have to have a broader outreach than your competitors and be able to get to more people than them. Adopting responsive web design for your website will ensure that you reach to a wider target audience thus improving your conversion chances.

Get the Right Response by Getting Responsive

If we look at the statistics pertaining to responsive web design in 2013, we will clearly see why every company must embrace this trend for their website as soon as possible. Thanks to its capability to detect devices and load content and data selectively with a higher speed, responsive design will continue to be the dominating trend throughout 2014, too, and maybe even in the following years.

 

5 Essential Tips for Impressive Graphic Design

11 April,2014 Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

Creating memorable graphic designs for your websites is a tough task which is not ridden of obstacles. Thus, it is essential to keep a few tips in mind which can aid you in coming up with impressive and great-looking projects and graphics. Here are the more important tips you should keep at the back of your mind when working on each one of your projects.

Tip № 1: Use contrast cleverly to make your design distinguishable

Using contrast will help your design projects stand out and be more memorable. Particularly when selecting the background color and the one of the graphics or fonts, it is very important to aim for good contrast, as otherwise the design will not only be unimpressive, but it may also be unreadable. This is extremely important for web design in particular. The thumb rule is: combine a background in a lighter color with a dark colored font, and vice versa. That way, the texts and graphics in your design will be easier to perceive.

Tip № 2: Selecting a color scheme for the design

The color scheme you use should be consistent throughout your design. Start with two or three colors and their hues. A very popular range of colors that has recently been extensively adopted by many designers and is in trend at the moment is the range of bright pastel hues. Make sure that you use the colors you have chosen in all your branding and website elements, if you are working on a project for web design.

Tip № 3: Choose a palette for your fonts

Image source: Ru Tover – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rutover/3681634702

In the same way you select a color scheme for your design, you should focus on a palette for your fonts as well, and use it consistently throughout the entire project. When selecting font colors, you should not forget that black and white will always be safe bets as they can match almost all color schemes.

You may already have a few fonts that you implement in your work often or you may have also developed your own fonts. Whatever the case, you will have to select a font for your headings, the subtitles and the main body text. It is great to choose an impressive font for the heading, as that will help it get noticed, but you should select less complicated fonts for the subtitles and body text, which will also be more easily readable. Your aim is not only to impress, but to also make the design easy to read.

Tip № 4: Leave no freestanding (“naked”) images

Incorporating images into your graphic design will make it more interesting and more easily perceivable. Images break the monotony of plain text and make it easier to digest. However, your images should not just be scattered around the layout with no order whatsoever. If you use a grid or a frame to arrange the images (even if it is an invisible one) they will look much better organized and the entire design will acquire a much more professional look.

Tip № 5: Keep it as simple as possible

Each element of your graphic design should be placed where it is for a reason. It is very easy to get carried away and add too many images, different fonts and graphics. However, this will only make your design look cluttered and unorganized, and for website layouts it can be very overwhelming and distracting for the visitors of the website. It is always better to keep the number of colors, shapes, fonts and frames you use to the bare minimum. That way, each element can shine with its own beauty, without being overshadowed by the clutter.

These tips can be especially useful in case you are designing a layout for a website, but they can come in handy in all your other graphic design projects as well.

Color: A Powerful Tool in Graphic and Web Design

9 April,2014 Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

Color is one of the greatest tools that a graphic or web designer has at his/her disposal. Color has the ability to engage the emotions of a website’s visitors and this usually happens on a subconscious level. It is a powerful web design tool of non-verbal communication and it can provoke both emotional and physical reactions in the viewers.

Thus, the color scheme of a website should be given careful consideration. It is very important to get it right in order to get the desired reaction and results. A website’s color scheme should be built in compliance with the main principles of the color theory, but for best results, a website owner should definitely seek professional advice.

The color theory is a complex art in itself, but here we will focus more on the symbolism and meaning of the different colors and the emotions that they evoke into the visitors.

The Popular Meaning of Colors

Image source: Capture Queen – https://www.flickr.com/photos/uaeincredible/231011361

A certain color can have different meanings across different cultures. Thus, when you are designing a website, you should take your target audience and its cultural distinctions into consideration. You have to be well aware of the way your audience perceives the colors. If you know what your website’s color scheme is saying, you can avoid some serious mistakes.

The immediate opinion of a visitor of your website is formed at the moment he/she sees your site for the first time. And the first impression is formed not because of your products or content, but because of the appearance of the web page itself and a big part of this appearance is formed by the color scheme. The chosen colors work on the subconscious level and the visitors react to them intuitively. If your site’s color scheme is chosen in such a way that it grabs the attention of your audience, your work is half done.

Here are the emotions that the different colors evoke at the first glance.

Blue

Blue is associated with peace, patience, tranquility and stability. It is one of the favorite colors of men. It also evokes the feeling of trust, the perception of professionalism, honor and security.

Red

Red is the color of passion, desire and excitement. It is associated with love, power, energy, strength, boldness and leadership. However, it also carries associations of danger, alarms and other negative feelings. Thus, it should be used wisely.

Yellow

This is the color which is most closely connected with liveliness. Yellow is a very energetic color and evokes feelings of happiness. It also carries associations with amusement, joy, curiosity, brightness, optimism, etc.

Green

Green is the color of nature, harmony, healing, health and food. It is also often associated with money.

Orange

Orange is the color of creativity and cheerfulness. It is also associated with confidence, friendliness, courage, playfulness, steadfastness, etc.

Purple

Purple is traditionally associated with nobility, wealth and power. Other associations that it provokes are those of royalty, wisdom, independence, luxury, ambition, magic, mystery and dignity.

Brown

This is the color of confidence and relaxation. It means nature, earthiness, durability, reliability, comfort, etc. Some perceive it as the color of sophistication, solidity, etc.

Grey

Grey is a color which is most strongly associated with conservatism, seriousness and traditionalism. It can evoke the feelings of innocence and purity as well. Security, intelligence, reliability, dignity, practicality, maturity are all associations that grey can provoke. But it can also mean sadness, boredom, gloominess. When combined with orange, for instance, grey evokes a sense of perfection and looks really stunning.

White

White is the color of purity, innocence, calmness and simplicity. It is great to use as an accent or background color as it highlight all the other colors.

Black

Black is an elegant, stylish color which we associate with power, formality, sophistication, etc. It is a great technical color and it can add some mystery to the site’s design. But it can provoke feelings of depression, too, if it is used over large areas. So, black should be used moderately. On the other hand, if you choose black for the background it can improve the depth and perspective of the design. Black is a great color to use for photography sites, as it makes the other colors very vibrant.

Pink

Pink is the color of romance, tenderness, femininity, emotional healing, affection, care, sweet taste and smell, etc.

A Few Useful Tips:

As a conclusion, here are a few invaluable tips that will assist you in selecting a suitable color scheme for your site. These pieces of advice are used widely by the professional designers.

– For your texts to be readable without difficulties, select contrasting colors. The background and the text should contrast each other for better readability.

– Use fewer colors. You don’t want your website to look like a rainbow or a circus. To achieve the strongest impact, use one color in the headlines and another one in the text.

– Use a sufficient number of colors. It is good to use fewer colors, but they should be sufficient to convey your message. If you use too few hues, your site may look too plain and boring. Strike a good balance.

– Use intense color hues for the sections you want to attract the attention of the audience to. However, be careful, as if you have a too intense color scheme which attracts the visitors’ eyes to too many elements, it will be more distracting than beneficial.

– Seek inspiration from nature – there are incredible complementary color schemes found in nature, take advantage of them.

6 Indispensable Web Design Tips for 2014

31 March,2014 Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

So, you have a business website and you haven’t made changes to its design and content for quite a while. However, you should know that even if you own a medium or small business, your website should be kept up with the times and relevant; otherwise, you will soon find that your brand is no longer visible in the online world and you are losing your grasp on your market share. In 2014, online visibility will be more important than ever. So, here are a few essential web design tips for 2014 that will help you keep up with the trend and attract the interest of your potential clients.

1. Use WordPress to build your website

 

wordpress-logo-simplified-rgb

There is a reason for WordPress to be the most popular and widely used CMS recently. It allows you a lot of flexibility – you may choose to use a premium theme with a very high quality or go for a tailor-made design. It also gives you an easy way to edit and update all the pages of your site. You could even do it on your own. However, if you decide to take a more professional approach and engage a web designer to build your WordPress website for you, the professionals can come up with a completely custom-made design tailored to your needs and content, which will also have a user-friendly admin panel, so that you can easily make all the updates to your site even on your own.

2. Responsive design

You may have heard this term in relation with web design a lot of times but what does “responsive design” mean exactly? With so many people now using their mobile devices to go online, this means that your site should have a full-fledged mobile version to address the needs of these users. It is much more inconvenient for the users to see the information when they open links and they stack in tabs one over the other on their mobile devices. Instead, a separate mobile version of your site should display it in a single text and column where the content and images can be easily read. It should also be compatible with multiple screen resolutions, as not all mobile devices have the same display sizes and ratios.

3. Keep your site fresh and in line with the trends

Even 1-year-old design can look extremely outdated today. The trends are changing with a very fast pace. And in order not to lose traffic, you have to go with the flow. The trends in 2014 are all about flat design, typography, simple color combinations, longer pages that have visual anchors throughout, white space optimization and making good use of video content. A skillful web designer can combine these elements perfectly and make the difference between just another mediocre design and a fresh site with a great quality web design.

4. Include a blog into your site

It is not just enough to have a blog on your website; you have to update it regularly, too. Granted, updating your blog on a regular basis is a large commitment. However, the drawbacks cannot overshadow the immense advantages of a well managed blog. Through your blog, you can improve your brand awareness, educate your viewers and demonstrate your expertise. This allows you to attract traffic that is relevant to your niche and improve your marketing strategy. However, make sure the blog has been integrated into the site itself and it can be seen in the main navigation. This is a more professional approach and can lead people to your other pages, too.

5. Content marketing adoption

In some cases embracing content marketing may mean that you have to change your entire website and marketing strategy and go back to the basics of marketing – you have to define your target audience and the relevant info to communicate to the viewers, and determine what you want the people’s perception about your brand to be.
You have to get the suitable tools, too – a blog, a detailed content marketing plan, the suitable social media channels where your target audience lies. And then you have to draw a plan for a balanced mix of stories, educational and shareable content that you will distribute across these channels regularly. The content you create should be consistent, show personality and be varied, too. It may be hard in the beginning, but with time you will get better at it, and there is always professional help available as well.

6. Social media integration

It’s not enough to just stick a Twitter or Facebook icon on your home page. The icons should be properly linked to the pages of your brand on the respective social media; that goes without saying. But you should also check what first impression your social media pages make. This includes examining your latest updates, the design of the social channel, the engagement of the public, the relevance and shareability of the updates, etc.
The social media forms a large part of your brand recognition and development. Thus, you should use it responsibly and optimally. If your content is interesting and your social channels are very active, you can do more on your blog and site than just linking to social media through icons. You can add Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter feeds, comment and “like” options for Facebook and social sharing buttons to your blog. You can employ many more tools for managing your social media activities as well.

All these elements may sound overwhelming to you, if you haven’t dealt with web design and content management before. If yours is a small business, you may even be tempted to ignore these tips and stick to the age-old designs and strategies. However, this could be detrimental to your online visibility and your entire business. If you want to survive in the era of the online generation, you need to stay up to date in every aspect.

Web Design and SEO: Why is Responsive Design the Best for SEO?

26 March,2014 Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

With web browsing through mobile devices showing a steady upward trend, responsive web design has proven to be the best solution that combines the benefits of desktop and mobile dedicated sites. When your website incorporates responsive design elements that means that all the content on it can be displayed to all the users, regardless of whether they are using a mobile device or a desktop computer for viewing it. Furthermore, a responsive site can still tailor the data for easier viewing through mobiles through a few changes in the navigation and the order of showing content.

Responsive Web Design

That being said, the benefits of responsive web design do not end here. Responsive design has the upper hand on building separate desktop and mobile dedicated sites when examined from an SEO perspective, too. Let’s see why.

A Responsive Site Ranks for More Searches than a Mobile One

Often, the website developed for the mobile platforms has different content from the desktop version of the main website. This can be observed in a few common scenarios.

The mobile site has fewer pages than the desktop one

Since the mobile version of the site is almost every time built after the main site, the owners of the site often choose to add to the mobile site only the “important” web pages of the primary site. However, though the “less important” pages that are left out may receive smaller traffic, they have at least some traffic. If you exclude those pages, you will lose the mobile users who would have reached your site by finding those pages through the search engines.

The mobile site has different pages from the desktop one

If our mobile site features content that is not found on the desktop version, you may face two issues.

  • First, the mobile-only content may take longer to get indexed. Your desktop website is likely to be stronger as compared to the mobile version, thus Googlebot will visit it more often. So, the content that is only available on the mobile version will be a lot harder to find.
  • The other issue you may run into is that your desktop visitors will be deprived of that content. Even if you think that the desktop users won’t be interested in a certain page, do not exclude it from the desktop version; just don’t prioritize it in the site navigation. In the worst case, some pages of your site won’t have any mobile traffic and others won’t have any desktop traffic, but you won’t be losing visitors due to missing content.

There are the same pages on the desktop and mobile site, but the mobile version has less content

This can mean one of the following two things:

  • The mobile visitors have access to less information compared to the desktop viewers. – In that case, it will be harder for your mobile site to rank for the same amount of search terms the desktop version would rank for. It may be tempting to have less content because of the smaller screen, but do not forget that mobile users are used to scrolling and expect it.
  • The desktop visitors receive redundant or superfluous information and the mobile viewers get streamlined content. – In this scenario, the excessive information on the desktop version may be unnecessary anyway and it only creates clutter.

A responsive site has all the pages included

Responsive web design can resolve all the above issues as the content added to a responsive website is aimed at all visitors and not mobile or desktop users in particular. The site will have all the pages and the flexible navigation will allow the users to access the data they are interested in most. Thus, the rankings of the website won’t suffer due to missing or unmatching pages in the mobile and desktop versions.

There Are No Redirect Issues with Responsive Sites

In case you use different HTML in the mobile version of your website, you will need to bind the separate versions of every web page together. There are two options for that.

Dynamically served pages

In dynamically served mobile sites, the same URLs are used but depending on the user agent that is requesting the pages, the servers will send a different code. However, to the search engines this may appear like “cloaking” – sending different data to mask the real content of your site, and this attracts penalties. To prevent that, you must add a Vary HTTP Header.

Different URL for the mobile site

The URL is a unique ID for the search engines so your content should never be duplicated on two URLs. In case you choose to have a separate URL for the mobile version of the site, you have to select one of the sites as your “original” content source and use the rel=”canonical” tag for the other page, the “copied” one. Usually, you will have a canonical tag placed on the mobile site and it will be pointing to the desktop site. Google’s recommendation is to place a rel=”alternate” tag on the desktop pages too, so that the search engine will know that there is a mobile version of the site as well.

A responsive site is just the same site

In case you do the tagging of the mobile and desktop versions properly, the mobile site will most likely rank equally as well as a responsive site, but the scope for errors with tags and redirects is very big. On the other hand, a responsive site won’t face this issue in the first place as it is the same site you will be serving every time.

Responsive Design Yields Better Mobile Websites

This is important mainly for businesses. Here’s why:

If you choose to have separate mobile and desktop versions of your website, the tasks of updating, changing and maintaining the two versions will also be separated. In some cases, there are even separate teams dealing with these tasks. Often, the changes to the mobile site are usually made after updating the desktop version, which means that the mobile version may lag behind the desktop one. When adding new pages, that can pose issues with redirects, and when making changes to the content, the mobile visitors will receive inferior content compared to the desktop ones. This makes the job of your mobile team even harder.

Desktop and mobile updates and changes are integrated in responsive sites

On the other hand, when you use responsive web design for your site, all the changes and updates made to the site will be enacted onto the mobile and desktop versions simultaneously and instantaneously. This eliminates the need for a separate mobile team and the worries about inconsistencies, wrong redirects and lagging behind in content.

In Conclusion

A separately designed mobile version of your site may not always be inferior to a responsive site. It may be just as good if it is built really professionally, but that requires a lot of ongoing effort. Also, there are some cases when you might want to have different content on your mobile site and in such instances, a separate mobile site may be a better decision.

However, in the majority of cases, responsive web design is a much better strategy for displaying your site on different platforms, as it can save you a lot of time, effort and money and spare you from a host of issues. And as we were able to see, responsive sites have better prospects for ranking well with the search engines. We can safely say that responsive design is your best bet in terms of SEO.

 

 

 

 

The 5 Web Design Trends that Will Dominate 2014

24 March,2014 Web Design Tips No Comment Author: Nir Appelton

With the online space expanding so rapidly, the significance of web design is growing, too. And with this fast-pace development, keeping up to date with the trends is essential in order to be able to stand out from the crowd. 2014 is shaping up to be a year of many changes in web design – changes that you too can and should adopt. Let’s take a look at the five most boldly pronounced web design trends for 2014.

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