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8 Tips to Improve Your Web Design Skills

Are you going to design your business website? Have you not been able to come up with great ideas? If so, you may want to follow our tips, tricks, and general advice to help you create a compelling website design. Read on to know the tips.

1) Adding colors

You may want to avoid “overdesigning” your website. You may want to know the importance of beginning with shades of gray. What you need to do is try a grayscale design and then add color to the design elements one by one.

2) Use Keynote

For website prototypes, home pages or call to actions, you don’t necessarily need to learn Photoshop. You can also check out Keynote for the same purpose, especially if you want to create mockups. You can also check out a web repository that contains quality UI design templates for prototyping, wireframing and testing cell phone apps in Keynote.

3) Web fonts

If your business style guide includes nothing about web fonts, you need to change your mindset and add some fonts in order to improve your website design. For this, we suggest that you check out Google Fonts.

4) Social media icons

You are doing your best but you are still not getting enough visitors. If you have this problem, you may not be putting the social media icons on the right place of your website. What you need to do is place the icons in your website footer.

5) Ger rid of the carousel/slideshow

The purpose of the landing page carousel was to put a lot of information on the home page of a website. However, the catch is that not everyone stays on the home page in order to read all of the messages.

On the first visit, the visitors should be able to find that the stuff on the home page is relevant. Just keep things concise and it will work.

6) Simplify navigation

You may want to simplify the navigation of your site by eliminating dropdown menus and the multi-tier menu since they are accessed by only the most experienced users. Aside from this, you may also want to cut down on the number of links in the sidebar or header of your site.

7) Increase your font size

As far as web design goes, typography is really important. On a computer screen, it’s hard to read a text. Therefore, we suggest that you make important things more prominent by increasing the font size. This is important for important texts, especially the headings. You may also want to up the size of other text as well.

8) Use white space

You may want to use white space on your site. However, you don’t have to fill every area that is blank on your site.

How to Solve the Biggest Problems in a Creative Design Agency

A creative design agency with its designers goes through various strides for a client’s business to succeed.

The steps involve illustrating, laying out promotional materials, photographing, managing creative aspects etc. It also includes designing for advertisements such as website, brochures, mobile applications and much more.

The below-mentioned points explain the biggest problems in a creative design agency along with their solutions.

• Lack of potential designing

An agency’s ability in work exists within the staffs. In a creative design agency, it is necessary to ensure talented and potential designers, to lead the business.

Executing the right idea to achieve the desired result is important. A lack of talent in the designers can ruin this process.

Seek the right talent:

Finding the required potential is difficult. On the other hand using a less qualified designing technique will cause trouble. Therefore, being a creative agency, ‘Widen your approach’.

Try finding candidates outside your fringes. This will increase the members for recruitment, which makes it easier to select quality designers.

Talent, potential, and quality need to be paid well and treated well. This will help in the result you desire.

• No Excessive Leads

Many agencies stay satisfied with their sales and work proposals. This affects the process in a long run.

Underestimating the idea of creating leads may cause the agency to gain less access to clients.

Create Leads:

Generating leads for a Creative design agency means to enhance its reach. It is imperative for your idea and service to lurk around.

Find reasons for your idea to get acquainted unto many minds. Basically, you need to have a vibrant presence around online.

Exhibit your potential through testimonials, blogs, a description in social networking sites etc. These steps can encourage clients for your agency. Create Leads to lead the market for a long lasting business.

• Deficiency In Uniqueness:

What makes your work attractive?

If you stay as one among the crowd, it’s certain that you become less visible. This will compromise with your progress and sales.

No innovation and uniqueness in the work or the design will bring fewer clients. Increase your efficiency by

Being Unique:

In this competitive market of Creative design, Challenges are growing like nodes. Lack of innovation in the work cannot make you ‘stand out’ in the crowd.

To be outstanding, it’s necessary to function with uniqueness in a case of your work. For that, a creative design agency must
• Understand its purpose
• Build relationships
• Express its core identity
• Follow Unique standards
• Try to prevail in the market

Create your own position in the market to stay visible to the customers. Let others know your expertise by communicating your idea and taking part in different conversations.

Be part of a leading competitor serving innovative solutions to the customers.

• DIY Designers

DIY designers are nowadays threatening the professional creative design process. Hence, introductions of various amateur designers in the market are overcoming the professional designers.

Many amateurs have developed good work in creative design, which of some kind is domination for the professionals.

• Professionalism:

Few argue that growth in DIY designers brings value to high-quality designs. Many believe its aim can dilute the professional process.

Well, show the customers your professionalism by being efficient with your performance.

Grab their attention towards the professional creative designs and make them know your priority.

Allowing the customers to differentiate your work with the amateurs, must have their inclination on you.

• Getting The Right Clients:

Your quality in creating business growth for others defines your Capability. A persistent change in the mind of a client can affect your quality of service.

Having terribly demanding clients can trouble your approach towards the work.

Such as those who thoroughly change their mind and then abruptly come back to it, giving non-realistic deadlines and demands can lead to frustration.

• Choose The Right Client:

A wrong client can let you develop worst result. Therefore, you need to keep your standard and quality in preference before gaining a client.

Because performing a lower way of action can affect the agency. It’s relevant that you respect your ability by choosing the right client who deserves your service.

• Personal Contacts:

The impact of various mediums of communication has reserved its substantiality. There are no direct personal contacts conducted in today’s business procedures. As everyone prefer social networking or chat process to engage in any kind of dealing or communication. This generates a distance between the agency and the client.

• Maintain Personal Contacts:

To develop your client approaches, meet them personally. Conduct meetings and face to face conversations with the clients.

This can develop the relationship with the customer more strongly. Having communication other than through internet mediums can allow you to gain customer reactions directly.

• Difficulty In Adaption:

Growth in technology and management process has lead to less adaptability. Many creative design agencies still follow traditional methods and ways to provide service.

This works out, but not effectively.

• Good Adaptability:

As a creative design agency you have to master all the modern technologies.

Excelling in all formats of modern managing process and designing efforts will bring enhancement.

Therefore, adapt the new technology much before your competitor and accomplish the customer with a better result.

• Ineffective Management:

Ineffective management of projects in an agency can be threatening. For example, Creative design agencies prefer the process to be structural; hence they forsook it.

• Management Of Projects:

Inefficiency in managing your projects can cause your process to lay back.

Tools for the Web Designer in 2017

It is a difficult task to stay on top of the website design and development game. Society’s taste for aesthetics changes all the time and technology is in a constant state of evolution. Anyone who offers web design services have to keep themselves updated on the latest happenings and the newest tools available.

Here is a list of some of the best open source tools out there that are not as well-known yet, but are effective just as well as more popular programs:

ARCHETYPE

This tool allows website designers to quickly style and space typography for browsers. The styles used are based on the most popular and used methods, such as grids and modular design.

UIKIT

The tool for the memory-conscious designer, UIkit is a modular and lightweight front end framework. Since it does not take up too much online space, it is generally faster and more streamlined for an easier user experience.

KODEWEAVE

kodeWeave lets its users experiment with front end code. One feature that makes this different from other front end developer tools is that it can be downloaded as an application for desktops. It is useful for those who cannot be online all the time. It also allows designers with clients who do not want data on their projects and experiments in cloud storage.

COLORMIND

Colormind can study color schemes from films, photographs and artworks. It will then generate palettes based on these images. It can also create random schemes by itself if it has nothing to base on.

GRAPESJS

This is a site builder framework for online use. Users can edit their designs, the coding, and it has support for responsive design. It also has an undo and redo option and a drag-and-drop feature for pre-made sets of elements.

According to Web Designer Depot, another plus of GrapesJS is that it can be included in other projects. Users can migrate their work to another site builder, a content management system or CMS, or other HTML/CSS template editors for end user customization. As with all site building programs, it is not the most user-friendly editor, if one is wholly unfamiliar with website design.

ILLUSION.AI

This is a user interface that holds customizable conversations with site visitors. Illusion.AI is a service that can be integrated into online products. It can give modified answers to queries regarding one’s products or services, as stated by Practical Ecommerce.

How to Create a Website on a Budget

There are various reasons why you may want your own website…

If you are thinking of starting an online business one of the first things you will need to do is get yourself a website in place.

If you have an existing business you may want to have your own piece of the internet for your customers to visit ‘out of hours’.

Maybe you just want your own personal website for a different purpose.

Whatever the reasons for wanting a website, it can be a daunting prospect if you have never tackled anything like this before

You may think you need to hire a company of programmers or web designers to get your website up and running. You could do this, but the cost of doing so can be a little more than you are prepared to spend.

Besides if you go down this route and you do hire one of these companies then what happens when you want to change something on your web page? Even if its just one sentence, changing the colour scheme or changing a picture, it could take time and cost you money.

Wouldn’t it be easier, not to have to worry about these issues and simply change things yourself?

You may be thinking that you don’t know how to write code…

Or you don’t have the necessary IT skills to do that sort of thing…

Or it’s just too much of a complicated thing for you to tackle…

You may even be thinking that you wouldn’t know where to start…

Well you are not alone, a lot of people have these reservations when faced with the same prospect.

The good news is nowadays building your own website is not that difficult, in fact you could have your own website up and running from scratch in just one single afternoon.

You don’t need to know coding…

You don’t need any IT skills…

and it really isn’t as difficult as you may think.

As for where to start…

That’s what I’m about to tell you!

You may be thinking the simple way is to head off to wix or Weebly and put together a free drag and drop website and while this is true if you just want your website as a bit of fun or for non business purposes, If you want to be taken seriously as a business then you will need your own website with your own web address.

You see your website is often the first experience a potential customer has of your business and if you are offering products or services on a website from a free provider what kind of image do you think this gives to your browsing prospect?

So a small investment now will pay dividends in the future and save you from the inevitable and sometimes very complicated task of changing to a paid for website somewhere further down the line.

Besides you can create your own website, with your own domain name for less than $10 a month, not bad eh?

I know the idea of building your own website from scratch can be a daunting one but it really is not as bad as you may think.

Choose and Purchase a name

The First thing you will need to do before you start anything is to decide on a name for your website.

I like to sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and write out various different ideas for my website name, I generally want to come up with at least three that I like because chances are someone has already taken one of the names you come up with.

Now obviously only you will have an idea what you want your website to be called but usually it will be something relating to the particular area or niche that you are currently operating in.

For example If you sell videos teaching how to play golf you might want something such as: beginnersgolfvideos.com

If you are having trouble coming up with a name for your website there are resources out there that can help you decide on a name.

Once you have your ideas for you website name then we can go and look at a domain name provider to purchase your chosen name.

A domain name is not expensive and will usually cost you between $6 to $12 a Year.

Towards the end of the your domain name expiry, your provider will send you an email asking if you would like to renew your name and then its up to you whether you decide to keep it or just let it expire.

There are numerous domain name providers out there but they all offer you a fairly similar service and price, it’s always worth it to just have a look around and see what offers you can get.

Once your domain name is chosen, you will be asked to set up an account so that you can register your details and pay for your new domain name.

And there you have it, you are now the proud owner of your very own domain name.

Buy Your Web Hosting

The next thing you need to do is find a web host for your website, this can be purchased from a hosting company.

As with domain name providers there are hundreds of web hosting companies out there, but unlike domain name providers it is more important to ensure you get a good hosting service who can provide you with a reliable service, after all any issues here and you website could become inaccessible which is not good for business.

You could always buy your web hosting from the same company who provided your domain name and although this is a more convenient option it usually works out more expensive.

It’s worth doing a little research and looking at review sites to see which companies offer a good service and even speak to friends and colleagues who have their own websites to see which companies they recommend.

Once you decide on which company you are going to use, setting up your account is pretty straight forward, just choose the package you want from their website, set up an account, pay for your hosting (usually between $10 – $15 a Month) then wait for the email confirming everything.

So you now have your domain name and your web hosting sorted.

Set Your Name Servers

The final thing you need to do before you can start building your own website is to set your domain name servers.

All we need to do is point your domain name provider to the place on the internet where your website is being hosted.

This is called ‘Setting your domain name servers’

Despite what you think this process is really very easy and just involves supplying your domain name provider with the location of your websites hosting address.

It is just a simple act of copying the information sent to you in your important email and pasting it to the relevant section on your domain name providers website.

If you did happen to purchase your domain name AND your Hosting from the same company then you don’t even need to do this.

Install WordPress and Off You Go

Finally you can install WordPress on to your page and then you can build your website using this platform.

It is reported that 27.9% of all websites on the internet were built using WordPress.

WordPress is probably the easiest platform available today for a complete beginner to build your own website from scratch, and it is totally FREE!

But don’t let the fact that it’s free fool you into thinking it’s not very good…

Because you would be very wrong, WordPress is used by everyone from webmasters, bloggers, developers and one man marketers to large businesses.

Web Design Ideas

When to Spend Money on Your Web Design Ideas

We see it daily: “Create your website for free” but is it really free? What about the hosting, the domain, your security and privacy. Will there be an indirect cost to my business after subscribing to this “free” offer? Before we answer all the questions above, we need to ascertain the real nature of the business we intend to advertise, and the purpose it serves.

We will share what steps to take in deciding web design ideas to make your website come alive on the World Wide Web

There are many offers on the internet that invite you to build a website for free. They even indicate how easy it is to create your free website. This might be true if you are not running a professional business or if you have a flair for graphic arts and basic designing.

More Than Just a Web Presence

Your online presence should be more than just taking up cyberspace. It should allow easy access, creativity, easy navigation, social media integration, search engine visibility and more user-friendly features.

All the above should be taken into consideration once you decide to compete with hundreds of other businesses like yours on the World Wide Web. With a fraction of the real cost, a professional Web Designer or Web Developer can make your business more effective to stand out from the rest.

The Luring Strategy

Most companies that advertise free and easy web templates know that it is more than just a “drag and drop” phenomenon. They encourage you to upgrade soon after they capture your interest.

Do You Want To Own Your Domain?

This is an important question with so many important answers. Of course, I want to personalize my domain since it gives me the flexibility to make my identity, products, and services unique. However, if I am allowed to create a website for free, chances are I will automatically inherit a sub domain from the hosting provider of the free service.

Let’s take WordPress as an example: WordPress offers free websites but if you look at your domain name, it has the WordPress URL plus your business name at the end after the slash. This is so due to the fact that you do not own the domain. Once you upgrade your free account to a paid subscriber, you will be billed for your personalized domain name and the features that go with your subscription.

Do Consider Bandwidth

Your bandwidth is also a key factor in deciding your web design ideas. If you have a free website, your space to store pictures, movies and other files, may be limited as your hosting plan is shared with other free subscribers. Then, there is the need for security since you do not fully own the website.

Security becomes an issue when choosing your web design ideas. You might not want to share your hosting as it could be vulnerable to attacks such as hacking and other counter cyber activities.

Passion Or Profit

The bottom line in selecting suitable web design ideas, one should consider all the above factors. I always reiterate that if one intends to run a professional money-making business, or if one is desirous of attracting qualified clients, he or she should seek the help of a Web Designer, Web Developer or Graphic Arts specialist.

If someone wants to create a blog for a hobby, then my recommendation to them is to accept the free offer, save their money, select and create the web design ideas on their own. Once we understand the nature of the web hosting industry and what it offers, and the results it generates, we will be better able to make qualified decisions.

Top 4 Web Design Techniques For Business Websites

Websites have come a long way, from simply online platforms only set up with a view to providing information about the owner to sophisticated platforms with different variables and ever changing dynamics. No wonder many companies, both startups and renowned corporations are trying to grab a piece of the cake by attracting prospective customers with well-designed websites. But how do you make your website more appealing? Check out these 4 web design techniques:

2. Minimalism

Websites evolved from tacky and burdened with information to clean and minimal. You may be tempted to add just a bit more information which you may find useful or even necessary, but you may want to keep it simple. Too many options and information can confuse or overwhelm some people, which may drive them to the other competitor websites. Remember, less is more. However, you can spruce up the website by adding bold colors, which is one of the hottest trends in web design right now.

3. Humanization

You may think that giving straightforward information about the business is the prudent thing to do. But we urge you to put yourself in the potential client´s shoes and think about, not only simplification as we suggested while discussing minimalism, but also how to show the website visitor that you care about them. An excellent example of this practice is Facebook which, not so long ago, started asking its member how they feel, wishing them a good day and even telling them about the weather forecast in the city they live in.

4. Animation

Going along with keeping it simple, you may want to think about adding animation to the website as additional information or to clarify other information. Again, you must try not to overburden your website. Especially useful kinds of animations are those which explain in detail how the product works.

Web Design Guidelines for the Perfect Business Website

Whether you’re a start-up or an established enterprise, your most important asset for marketing your products or services for little cost is your website – a web domain can be picked for just a few pounds.

Despite a new trend for “drag and drop” website builders, the best way to ensure your website is of a high-quality and, consequently, as attractive as it can be to potential customers is to employ the services of a professional web design agency. Web design specialists will have extensive experience working with businesses like yours and will be able to ensure your website is as effective as it can be.

When consulting your web design agency, it’s important to keep in mind the following:

REDUCE THE CLUTTER
No one wants to be bombarded with pop-ups, adverts, and buttons the minute they land on a website. When having your website designed or re-designed, be sure to keep everything clean and clear – content should be concise and to-the-point and you should aim to have plenty of white space, too. Years ago, it was considered essential to have hundreds of pages with in-depth information about every aspect of your businesses, however, times have changed. Potential customers landing on your website should be able to clearly identify the purpose of your website and what you’re offering within just five seconds – any longer and you’re at risk of losing the prospective customers’ attention.

DO YOUR RESEARCH FOR A WEBSITES
Before consulting a web design agency, it’s important you research, looking at your competitors, to get an idea of what your website should look like. Your web designer will be able to advise on the aesthetics and usability of your site; however, the process can be made easier and, sometimes, cheaper if you have a thorough outline of what you would like before you get started. However, always try to keep your website unique, taking it to a new level above your competitors – getting inspired and taking small features is fine but you don’t want to replicate your competitors’ entire website.

KEEP YOUR WEBSITE FONT SIMPLE
It sounds juvenile; however, many business owners go wrong at the first hurdle with their website by choosing an unclear, stylised, or incorrectly coloured font. When choosing the typeface used on your website, remember to keep everything readable – font size 10 is a good standard – and clear. Popular website fonts that are also contemporary looking include Open Sans, Arvo, PT Sans, and PT Serif. Generally, always choose black font for a white background and white font for a dark background.

REMEMBER THE “VISUAL HIERARCHY”
Here is a little technical information for you. Your web design agency will be experts in implementing the “visual hierarchy” properly, however, it’s good measure for you to be aware of why your designer is laying your website out in a special way. The visual hierarchy is consumer research that proves, as customers, our eyes move from the top to bottom of a website before scanning left to right, which means you should position your call-to-actions effectively to ensure maximum conversion. For instance, to push customers to call you, display “call now” with your number top left of your site.

OPTIMISE A WEBSITE FOR MOBILES
More than ever, having an effective mobile website is essential to converting customers on the go. Plus, mobile optimisation gives your website a green tick for SEO, too. A recent study suggests that 51% of online sales are made using a mobile phone or tablet so, especially if your business is in e-commerce, it will pay to optimise your website for mobiles – allowing your customers to shop on the go.

Website Builder Vs Website Designer – Hire Or Do It Yourself

A well-designed website that is built using the best practices will work for you 24/7 to attract visitors and turn those visitors into customers. The good news is that you have a few choices when it comes to having a website designed for your local business:

1. You can do it yourself (DIY) by learning to code or use a Website Builder

2. You can hire a professional web designer

Learning how to build a website from scratch will be time consuming and hiring a web designer can require a larger budget than planned, which is why the free and low cost website builder services like Weebly, Wix, and Squarespace have become all the rage these days. You can’t visit a website, listen to a podcast, or watch a video online without seeing or hearing ads talking about how you can create a beautiful, fully functional website in as little as a few hours. With no coding or design experience.

Wow. That sounds amazing, but is it really what you’re looking for?

For local businesses, a web builder can seem like the best option. However, it’s important to understand the pros and cons of using one of these tools and whether it will really serve your business goals in the long run.

Website Builder vs Website Designer
If you don’t plan to teach yourself how to build a website from scratch then you are left with: website builder vs. website designer. As convenient as web builders may claim to be, below are a few reasons why, at the end of the day, we recommend you at least consider investing in professional web design services rather than just settling for a DIY website builder. After all, you are running a business so you are going to need a website that sells customers.

The Pros & Cons of a Website Builder
DIY website builders have become so popular recently.

The main attraction to them is that users can quickly choose a template, upload their content, and have a website online in a matter of hours, at little to no cost.

These website builders use “drag and drop” and “WYSIWYG” (stands for “What You See Is What You Get”) tools to make it easy for anyone to format and edit webpages. If you can use Microsoft Word then you can use these services, which is much better than having to learn HTML and CSS to build a website yourself.

With web builders, their paint-by-number templates make it very simple for you to upload content, like text and images, and place where you want it on the page. As long as you stay within the lines of the template and properly size your images to fit the space, then you should be in good shape.

Speed Does NOT Equal Results
While getting a website online as fast as possible might be convenient in the short term, it does not mean you’re going to see results quickly. As you can imagine, there is more to web design than just uploading a few pictures and pasting some text into a template.

Many business owners enjoy the DIY website builder process but are disappointed when they don’t see new customers coming into their office saying they found you online. After many hours or weeks of website editing, many business owners find out the hard way that not all websites are created equal.

The most beautiful website in the world can’t generate new customers if it can’t be found by the people looking for it or if it doesn’t provide a great user experience. Here are just a few of the very important web design and search engine optimization (SEO) elements that website builders can’t do for you:

  • Monitor and fix user and mobile experience issues
  • Create lead generation strategies
  • Keyword research and targeting
  • Title optimization
  • Local schema
  • Image optimization
  • Meta description optimization
  • Google Analytics & Tag Manager integration
  • Sitemap creation
  • Submit the website to the major search engines
  • And more…

Why Hire a Web Designer? (Besides Professional Design, of Course)
When hiring a professional web designer, you should expect the overall quality of your website to be higher.A great website designer will take the time to understand your business, not just the niche you are in but also what is unique about YOUR business, and then design and build a website that’s customized to you. This is very different than having to stuff your business into a predesigned and predetermined box. Also, if you’ve ever tried to use Photoshop or design any type of images for a website, you know how hard and time consuming it can be. Great images and designs will take your business to the next level and immediately create a higher level of trust with your potential customers.

Professional web design will make your business look unique and professional, helping it stand out from the crowd while still being functional and user friendly.

Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Free web builders may offer speed and convenience, but they can’t offer unique design to specifically fit and market your business. They also can’t work with you one-on-one to create lead generation opportunities and other digital strategies, like SEO, to drive more traffic to your website.

Let’s assume for a minute that you built a nice looking website using a web builder service. That’s great news, but it doesn’t mean anything if Google doesn’t know your website exists or doesn’t have enough faith in it to show your business off to its users. For example, let’s say you run a small business called “Dave’s Martial Arts” in Chicago. Your self-built website will likely come up in search results for “Dave’s Martial Arts,” but how likely is it that someone would search for that exact term? They are more likely to search “martial arts Chicago” or something similar if they’re not quite sure what they’re looking for. The people that you want to find your website probably won’t be able to unless they already know who you are.

That is not a great way to generate new business online.

When building your website you’re going to need to account for people who find products and services based on location. As more and more searches go mobile, search engines are using your location to deliver geo targeted results. “Dave’s Martial Arts” could be a few blocks from where a potential customer is searching, but if the SEO is not set up correctly on the website, and information like name, address, and phone number (NAP) are not easily found, the potential customer may never find you through an online search.

One of the many benefits of hiring a professional web designer is that they should understand how to maximize local SEO so your business comes up in a variety of Google searches. You will still need to work on your local listings and citations but having great on-site SEO is a huge head start.

Tips for Hiring a Web Designer
If you’d like your business to look professional, get found online easily, and start generating business for you from day one, then we recommend talking with some professional web designers. Start by doing a Google search for “Web Design in [your city, state]” (replace [your city, state] with the city and state you live in).

Most web designers will charge a one-time cost to custom design and build your website. You can expect the cost to be a minimum of $2,000.00 and can go up to $10,000.00 or more, depending on your specific business needs and they type of web designer you contacted. Keep in mind that large advertising agencies will always cost more than local boutique agencies. These prices will not include any ongoing SEO or the domain name (youbusiness.com) and web hosting (where your website will be stored), which you’ll most likely be responsible for supplying (don’t worry if you don’t know how to get those, the web designer should be able to help you through the process).

That is the traditional option but if that doesn’t sound right for you then search around for other solutions. There are other web design service options and models available.

Regardless of which path you choose, remember that it is 2017 and your customers are looking online for the solutions to the problems that your business can fix. If they can’t find you online then you are missing out on real customers and real opportunities. You need to start investing in your business’s online presence.

Good luck!

Web Design and Its Evolution

Web design has come a long way since August 1991 when the first ever website was launched. Tim Berners-Lee published a text-based site on behalf of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. The site itself was informative only and in no way interactive. Primitive in its looks, content included hyperlinks and was actually removed from the web in 1993. It was later decided to reinstate the website due to the importance of human and technological development.

Q: What’s one of the biggest differences between websites of the early 1990’s and those of today?

A: The first website ever created was solely for informative purposes whereas today, owners can offer a wealth of information, sell products and services, provide platforms for social interaction and much more. All of this is carried out in a visually appealing manner.

Q: Can we talk about speed?

A: Absolutely! You may have been around long enough to remember the days of dialup internet. If not, its highly recommended you look into it. Those used to lighting fast fibre broadband will almost certainly be enlightened to learn the process of dialup and how this would mean the telephone (land line) could not be used and was somewhat slow and at times intermittent. Taking this into consideration, websites of 90’s were based primarily around text. Design layouts were a concept of the future along with imagery, typography and navigation. Due to the simplistic (looking) nature of a primitive website, it meant that the user experience was as optimised as it possibly could be and this notion was based upon a user requiring information from a website that worked through a dialup connection.

Q: So what happened next?

A: Towards the mid 1990’s on site page builders began to grow in popularity with web designers choosing this option as a preferred layout. Offering tables, columns and rows, content was able to be separated into specific blocks based upon a subject or category. This meant a web page held even more visual appeal than that of those from the early 1990’s. The main focus continued to be the users’ experience.

Q: Do you remember the page counter?

A: Page counters were great landmarks, offering insight into the number of people who visited a web page. This type of information was important to both the website owner and the customer. The former gives an idea of the number of people landing on the website with the latter giving the potential reader an idea of website popularity.

Q: Can we look at page structure then and now?

A: As previously mentioned, early website structure was based heavily around text before moving onto a more boxy feel in terms of blocks and columns. Today, web pages are hot on offering great navigation in order to complete a call to action in as fewer clicks as possible. Great images, well-written content and trust signals are all strategically placed within a professional build.

Q: Can we learn about the 2000’s?

A: This is where content and design saw a clear separation through the magical realms of CSS. Whitespace became a positive aspect making way for the eradication of block colours throughout a web page. Another positive feature of this era included the addition of links to icons as well as text. Resolution and pixelation moved to the forefront of important design considerations.

Q: What about today?

A: Known in the industry as the ‘modern web’, and starting out with the birth of Web 2.0, this modern era has built up over time including the likes of social media integration, interactive content and multimedia applications. Results over time have mapped out how websites are built and how we have come to market them today.

With the user experience always at the forefront of design and development since 1993, it will be interesting to re-visit in a further decade.

5 Tips to Avoid Mistakes in Your Website Design Process

Many people design the website for their business to save their money. Awkwardly, they don’t know the concepts of a good website design. To design a good website is an art and science. Art is its design and color combination and science is its user interface. No matter if your business is new or the old one. But a creative website design definitely attracts the target audience. In the absence of a website, nobody knows you and your trade. To design a website, you need a reliable website designing company. That will create a good website for your company.< designer needs to avoid several mistakes at any cost. In this article, we are going to mention the mistakes as well as the tips to avoid them. A designer needs to know about these common mistakes to avoid design inconsistencies.

Top Five Tips to avoid the mistakes while designing a website

1. Clutter: Most people put too many videos, content, images and design elements on the homepage. It looks very messy, which makes the site busy as well as difficult to use. It confuses the user and looks untidy. As a result, a user is not able to make any wise decision as it fails to conclude what the site is about?

*In order to avoid clutter,the home page should be very clear and give a quick information to the users. Keep the important things on the home page and add additional pages for detailed information. It will save the time of the target audience.

2. Compatibility with Browsers and Mobile Devices: If you tested the website on a single browser, you cannot declare it a good website, until you test it on all browsers and mobile devices. This mistake may harm the reputation of a website design company.

*Continuous Testing: Test the Website properly and consistently on different browsers, including Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Make sure the website works appropriately on all devices like smartphones and tablets.

3. Poor Navigation: Navigation is an important component, try to make it simple. Make sure that user should be able to navigate very easily without wasting a second.

Tip: The top navigation or left hand side navigation bar is the most popular way to direct the user.

*How to avoid poor navigation: A clear Navigation bar must be available on every page. A site map is also helpful for navigation. Through a map, users can see overall view of the website at a glance.

4. Unorganized content and keyword stuffing: It is a myth that keyword stuffing will generate traffic to your website. Putting the name of your business in every single paragraph makes your content awkward to read.

*Hire a Content Specialist: A content writer possesses the expertise to write quality content without stuffing the keywords. Quality content will help you generate traffic on your website.

5. Cheap Design Agency: In order to save money, sometimes people hire a cheap design company. This decision sometimes proves to be very harmful for your business.