by Lawrence Huffman | Nov 2, 2017 | Web Design
The key to converting customers is a beautiful and user-friendly website. Being a business owner, it is important that your website is built the same way that your brick and mortar store has been established. Creating a website is different from the storefront because it is open 24/7 and is always accessible to any customer all over the world. The website showcases the brand of the company and even inform or sell successfully to its visitors.
When you design your website, there are a couple of aspects that are considered more important compared to the others. The latter is more of a compliment to make the website more interactive with the visitors. Good design is not about incorporating almost every cool tool or feature that designing can be done. It is about making good use of its aspects the right way.
Importance of White Space in web design
What white space means here is not only about the ‘white’ space left. It refers the need for a blank space on every page. This will help draw the attention of the viewers to areas that you want them to focus on, and even giving contrast to the page. When this is done right, having white space will help balance out the whole page and even giving it a great upscale tone.
Color
Did you know that there are certain factors in applying colors to your website? The ones that you choose have great impact – way greater than any other factors that are also the same with customers purchasing services or products. Here is a simple guideline:
- The colors must match the current branding color theme of the business. It must be consistent, not only on the website alone. It should spread in every platform that the business uses.
- The colors must not be too overwhelming or overpowering. You do not want the colors to cover up the message that you want to convey.
- The colors must also complement each. When they clash, they become abrasive to the eyes and will trigger visitors to leave right away.
- For points of interests or Call To Actions, it must be used with bold colors to draw the visitor’s attention to it.
- The more subtle colors must be used for secondary information or background.
- The background colors must also work well with the font colors. While it can be fun when playing around with colors, you should not forget about the most important thing about websites – readability of its text.
Navigation
This refers to how the menu is arranged and how the visitor finds the things easily and guide them where they need to go. This is one of the most annoying things that visitors experience when it goes wrong or not done properly – when they don’t know where to go next. This could be because the information has gotten too congested or they are not labeled properly. Thus it makes it difficult to navigate. Each of them must be labeled clearly so that the people can know when they are going to click on it.
by Lawrence Huffman | Nov 1, 2017 | Web Design
Any business or company that desires to be profitable by attracting customers online, one of the online tools that take this significant role is the website. Even if you are not designing a website for your business, it is still necessary to take care of certain things that ensure your target audience; visitor or end user doesn’t encounter any trouble while they navigate the site.
The website must be designed in a way that it can deliver the complete brand experience. Here is a list of things that most websites skip.
Social media links
These days, there’s no denying how popular social media is and it is the easiest way to communicate with people. Recently, Facebook announced that there are more than 2 billion people actively posting and logging in on Facebook just to use their website. You have to take advantage of this medium to connect to a wider audience. You can integrate your website with your social media account using a social integration tool.
Call to Action
As soon as the visitor arrives at your website, they should be able to perform a “call to action.” You can use a link or a button with a label “Sign-Up” or “Call Us Now,” something that lets the user act immediately. These links or buttons must have the right appeal as well and will only pop out at the right time so that you won’t end up annoying your visitors.
Responsive Web Design
Most people today are accessing their social media accounts or websites through the use of their tablets or smartphones. This has rapidly increased since the year 2012. companies and marketers are now more focused on this particular platform wherein 58 percent of the companies have their own mobile marketing team.
Because of situations like those above, all the more it is important to have a responsive web design to gain more profitable customers. A website that is mobile friendly can get your business or company to compete with the competitors equally. This will also give your business the boost it needs to stay ahead.
Email marketing campaign
Many may think that this is an outdated method when it comes to staying in touch with the customers. However, email marketing can create wonders for the business when they are used in the right way. Putting an email subscription form provides you the ability in breaking through the mess of promoting your products and services to the audience that posse’s revenue-generating results. When it comes to choosing an email marketing software solution there are many to choose from all with different plans
Testimonials
This is like a word-of-mouth advertising, but done online. It has been the most credible way of promoting a business because they are recommended solely by someone who has experienced the product or service first hand. A section of your company’s website must contain comments or remarks coming from customers that you have served previously with your products or services. This way, you will gain the trust of your customers and potential ones as well.
by Lawrence Huffman | Nov 1, 2017 | Web Design
You’ve already had your website running for quite a while now, and on the surface of things, all seem to be going well. The graphics are well organized and placed well where they should be, and everything is linked correctly. However, you’ve noticed the bounce rate seems to go beyond belief. It seems that users arriving at your website have been leaving quickly, not to mention in droves. What could be the reason for their immediate flight as soon as they arrive at your website?
Below are likely the factors that you’ve missed that may have put users off and left right away. The good part about most of these is that they are easily rectified. You might find your answer below.
Music on Auto Play
This feature has already faded gradually in the past years, but there are still websites that make use of this. It has a very ugly result to a website. Most home computer users listen to their music; watch television or not having any music at all while browsing online. So a website having a soundtrack of its own is the likely source of annoyance to them instead of joy. For office users, they might have speakers in silent mode, so they will not hear anything at all other than there is the unwanted addition to the loading times. And if they aren’t, the music will be the source of embarrassment for them when it suddenly blares out in front of their colleagues. This is hardly the way you want your potential customers to remember about you and your business.
Scrolling Adverts
This is a trend sometime before and is still being used today. The ones that use this lot are the eCommerce sites. They are those rectangular or square adverts that pop up at the dead center of the screen when you only just loaded an article that you’ve found interesting. It refuses to go away once you have entered your email address or you have clicked on the close button that is usually situated at the top right corner of the pop-up. Avoid using this scrolling adverts. Most people will just bounce off from your site as their principle dictates it every time they see the scrolling advert appear.
Overly Complex Navigation
All the content on a website must be easy to access as much as possible. Visitors want that they should be able to click on the content they desire faster, so getting into a 10-tier menu labyrinths is not going go well with their experience. When a visitor arrives at the homepage for the very first time, all they want to see is the link that directs them immediately to the area of interest. And this should happen within seconds, too. Keep in mind that visitors prefer it fast for them and this will only be applicable when the website is well designed. It is not good for a website that let its user dig deeper, or they will lose interest easily.
by Lawrence Huffman | Jun 30, 2017 | Web Design
Every individual that made it big in business was once a fledgling with zero knowledge about the industry. Same goes for web design as well. A path an individual has to take to succeed in an industry like web design is long and thorny and it requires many hours of learning and practice.
The beginning is the hardest part of the path
Starting to learn something is hard as you know nothing about the subject. Learning programming languages is especially hard because it has no connection to the majority of stuff people learn throughout the life. Only those that are willing to spend up to ten hours a day will be able to learn basic languages and start off their web design career.
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP are essential programming languages you will have to learn as a beginner. Don’t even try to find work without knowing at least these four. They will create a basis for which you will be able to build.
Another important thing a beginner should do is to throw away some money on quality software. Free tools are everywhere, but they won’t help you learn and improve so forget about them. Spend some money and buy good software as it will help you.
Once you get some tools and the knowledge, then the only thing left is to practice. You have to get comfortable with tools and make a site or two with the knowledge you acquired. Once you do that, then give your work to someone to check it and give you their opinion. You won’t be good at the beginning, but you will improve every single time you make something.
What to do after you learn basics?
Once you master the basics, then it’s time to sit down and learn some more. Yes, learning never stops in web design. Try to get some simple design work that will utilize skills you already possess. Acquire new languages whenever you get some free time from work.
The money you get from work won’t make you rich, but some basic work will leave you with free time you can invest into learning some complex languages. Also, doing simple projects is excellent as the money you get will be useful for the purchase of some expensive tools that will make web design easier than before. Check web design tool reviews to find those that suit your style of work.
