Showing posts with label web design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web design. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

5 Main Skills You Should Develop to Build a Great Web Design Career

web , web design
5 Main Skills You Should Develop to Build a Great Web Design Career
If you want to be a web designer then develop these 5 key skills

With the world becoming ever more dependent on online environments it is becoming increasingly more important to have an online presence if you want to succeed in business. For this reason, quality web designers are becoming sought after. That is both a good and a bad thing.

Seeing that web designing is becoming such a popular profession, everyone wants a piece of the action, whether they are good or not. Therefore, you have to stay ahead of the masses and keep your skills up to date if you want to make it as a web designer. Here are the 5 main skills you need to develop to become a great web designer.


1. Know the whole process

Web design is a complex process, and it often overlaps with graphic design. It is therefore very important to be competent in graphic design and know the basic principles of design.

Color is the most basic skill you need to master in order to design eye-catching web pages. Apart from knowing what colors work well, you also need to know what color pallets are popular during a season. You can click here to explore colour theory.

Proportion and spacing are two more design principles that can make or break a web designer. Your customer and also the type of website you are designing will dictate whether you design a symmetrical or asymmetrical page.

You also don’t want to have the page feel cluttered, but you want to use the space available optimally. This will ultimately influence the flow of the page which is another design principle that you need to master.

With all this is mind,it is vital that you are fully familiar with the web design process and over time and with experience you can develop your own process as you discover what works best for you and for your web design clients.



2. HTML

One of the things that sets a part-time web designer apart from the rest is an in-depth knowledge of HTML. This is the foundational language on which all websites are built.

Although there are numerous WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors available which help anyone build a website, you will never have a proper grasp of how a website operates if you don’t know HTML. You’ll also have a much harder time figuring out what is wrong if your site doesn’t work the way you want it to.

WYSIWYG editors are limited in their functionality, and you will only have the available tools and formatting options of the specific editor to build your site. If you know HTML, your imagination and skill is your greatest asset. You have absolute freedom in terms of design and functionality when you are skilled at using HTML. If something doesn’t exist, you can create it.

Once you learn HTML you can progress to learn CSS and then JavaScript and then.... The more web related programming languages you know the more options you will have as a web designer and developer. HTML is always the starting point for learning web programming.


3. User Experience Research

Have you ever browsed a website and felt absolutely frustrated or discouraged? The chances are that the design of the page was not done properly. If you want to stand out as a web designer, you need to be an expert on user experience and design according to experience. This is by no means an easy task, and there are a number of routes you can take to ensure proper design.

When you look at an operating system like Windows for example. There is never only one single way in which something is done. The user decides which path works fro them and goes from there. The same applies to your websites.

You will need to create sitemaps and track user habits to determine which design will work best for the users. This is easier said than done and you will need to update a site from time to time as you gather more user data. Google analytics is a great way of gathering this type of data for free.

Once you have gathered and analysed the data use it to improve the user experience which in turn will make your websites more effective.


4. Mobile support

Gone are the days when being online meant that you were either sitting in front of your PC or browsing the web on your laptop. The smartphone and other mobile devices have changed the online landscape and so also the design world.

Anyone will be able to tell you that browsing a traditional website on a mobile phone sucks. More people gain access to the web via their mobile devices than stand-alone PCs or laptops.

Therefore, you need to be able to adjust your design to accommodate mobile browsing. The best way to test whether your site is mobile friendly is to browse your site on a mobile device or use an emulator like Screenfly

In truth you should ideally take a mobile first design approach. This means designing the mobile version of the website first and then scaling it up from there for larger devices such as tablets, laptops and desktop PC's. If you are designing this way you will need to learn about responsive web design and media queries.



5. Continue Learning

There are so many designers that fall into the trap of getting some sort of qualification and sticking with it without doing any further learning. It doesn’t matter how advanced or comprehensive your education is, the knowledge that you gained during your first year of studies will be outdated by the time you graduate.

The tech and online world is continually changing, and if you don’t commit to keeping with the times, you are going to quickly fall behind and become a second-tier designer. You need to stay abreast with new technology to keep your sites relevant. If you can’t deliver on your client's requests due to your lack of skills, they will get another designer.

Apart from tech skills, you also need to be aware of new design trends and be able to adjust your style from time to time. Sign up to our newsletter below and select the web design option to receive web related articles straight to your inbox.



Conclusion

Although you have all the skills in the world, there is one thing that skills won’t give you, and that is passion. You need to be inspired by what you do, or you won’t be able to harness all of your skills effectively. Passion and inspiration is the glue that combines all your skills and makes you a better designer.



About The Author

Howard Robson is an editor at educational portal AustralianEssays. He is interested in getting and sharing new knowledge about different topics, especially education, modern technologies. So, feel free to join him on Twitter and Facebook.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2018

10 Free Ways To Improve Your Website

onlinedesignteacher , web
10 Free Ways To Improve Your Website
how to improve your website for free
The internet has a whole world of great free resources for your website

If someone told you that you could quickly and easily improve your website and that it wouldn't cost you a penny, what would you say? Probably something like "what's the catch?". Well no catch here as I highlight 10 great (and free) website add-ons that can immediately improve your website.


1. Google Analytics

Google analytics is really a must have for any business website. By adding a couple of lines of code to your website Google can provide you with a wealth of data about your website, who visits it, where they come from, what they look at and for how long, what they click on.... The list goes on. Data like this is especially useful when tracking the performance of an online marketing campaign, a new product, a special offer or sale. You can sign up for Google Analytics here.

2. Share Buttons

Lets says someone visits your website and likes the content or thinks a friend would like it and would like to share it with them. You should make this as easy as possible for them using share buttons. Share buttons make it easier than ever for your audience to spread your content around the web, therefore increasing traffic and sales for you. AddThis is one of many companies that offer this free service.

3. Email Sign Up


email or newsletter sign up form
Gathering email addresses can help create a customer database

Another free and easy way to help traffic and sales is by adding an email/newsletter sign up widget to your website. The sign-up form needs to have a purpose of course (receive a free monthly newsletter, etc.). Make sure you mention that you will not sell email addresses to third-party businesses. This will give visitors reassurance that they won’t receive hundreds of spam emails. If you feel you don't have content worthy of sharing with your customers then you need to start a website blog, we'll discuss that in number 9. MailChimp is my recommended place to get a free email signup widget.

4. Contact Form

Sometimes people don't like giving you their email or phone number but they still want to get in touch to ask a question or make an enquiry about a product/service. Adding a contact form to your website allows them to do just that. Contact forms are also a better way to be contacted as your email address will be hidden too so you won't get any of that online spam that comes with having your email address on your website. JotForm is a great place to get free website contact forms.

5. Testimonials Widget

Testimonials area great way to build trust with potential customers and show a more human side to your business online. Studies show that people trust online testimonials almost as much as peer recommendations. So get going and add a free testimonials widget to your website using a company like GlowBoard or Spectoos.

6. Social Feed Widgets

online digital marketing
Social Media is a great place to promote your business

If you are active of social websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or others then you should look into adding a widget to display your latest social posts on your website. This keeps visitors on your website as opposed to sending them offsite to your social media page where they can easily get distracted and drift away from your content. Click on the links to learn more about the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram plugins.

7. Social Follow Buttons

If you've got great social media content worthy or displaying on your website then why not go a step further and offer social share buttons where website visitors can easily follow your social accounts in a single click? AddThis which I mentioned earlier offer this service but you can also try ShareThis.

8. Google Translate

Perhaps your business is local, perhaps not, either way english may not be the first language of your customers so you really should be offering your website in multiple languages. Sounds complicated but thanks to Google translate it really isn't. Click to learn how to add Google Translate to your website.

9. A Blog

This one is less of a widget or plugin and more of a website add-on. A blog is short for a web log but really it is just a place to write little articles related to your business or share information about news and events your business is involved in. For example, this is a blog! The great thing about a blog, apart from being free, is that by sharing new content on a regular basis Google rewards your website with a higher ranking in search results. If your website is built on a CMS there is likely a blog function built in already but if not Google's Blogger is the best free option.

10. Live Chat Widget

free website livechat plugin
Never miss an opportunity to engage with customers.

This one is only really workable if you work from a computer most of the day or if you have dedicated customer services staff. If you do then a live chat widget is a great way to engage you visitors to your website in real time. The live chat can be video, text or audio based depending on the plugin you choose. Tawk, MyLiveChat and PureChat are 3 free options.

11. FAQs Page

I know I said 10 add-ons but this is more of an extra web-page as opposed to a plugin, widget or add-on to your website. A frequently asked questions (FAQs) page help your customers find the information they need without having to contact you. It also shows a level of professionalism on your behalf as well as being a sign of good customer service as you try to solve possible issues or answer possible questions before they have even been asked.

About the Author

This article was written and shared with OnlineDesignTeacher by Opus Web Design.




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Saturday, June 2, 2018

5 Signs You Need To Update Your Website

changing face of web design , evolution of web design
5 Signs You Need To Update Your Website
Signs that you need to update your website
If your website matches any of these signs then it needs updating

The internet is a dynamic and rapidly changing place. It is not enough for a business to simply have a website. In fact your website needs to be fast, attractive and effective for it to be worthwhile having. Here are 5 quick things to check to see if your website is performing or whether it is in need of an update.


1. Your website appears dated

If you haven’t updated the design of your site for a while, chances are it has a dated aesthetic. Features such as Flash based videos or animations, bad pop-ups, corny stock photos or a gradient button menu are a sure-fire way to know that you need a new one. When analysing your website step into the shoes of a potential customer. They’re instantly going to associate the design and functionality of your site with the quality of the product or service you offer. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so make sure you make the best one possible.

When analysing your website step into the shoes of a potential customer.

If your website messaging seems stale or blends in with your competitors, it’s time to make a change and showcase your company for how remarkable it really is. The good news is that website rebuilds or redesigns don’t need to be a headache, Opus Web Design can help you update your site so it will not only captivates your audience but push them towards a conversion. Often, it’s not necessary to go through a complete website rebuild. We find, in many cases, that some simple optimizations and refreshed page elements can improve website appearance and performance.


2. Your competitors outrank you on Google

It's all well having a good looking website but it isn't much use to you if nobody can find it. We all search for businesses on Google, often even if we know the actual web address so your business needs to rank well, especially against your competitors. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and content marketing are vitally important for ensuring a healthy Google ranking. Search technology relies on algorithms to identify websites that are either completely static or don’t change their content regularly.

By continually having engaging and informative content that is keyword targeted on your website, you can take significant steps towards ensuring that your site stays ahead of your competitors. A good way to see whether or not you’re lagging behind is to do a simple Google search for your site and for your key services/products. If you find some of your competitors are higher in the search rankings than you, it may be time to rethink your SEO and content marketing strategy.


3. Your website isn’t mobile responsive

Mobile browsing now accounts for over half of all online activity


So your website looks good and ranks well but is it mobile friendly? People are constantly on their phones and tablets, so if your website doesn’t look great and function properly on all major device platforms, you’re ignoring potential customers. Today’s websites should be completely mobile responsive so that they appear and function well on devices. Mobile responsiveness has become massively important in terms of search rankings over the past couple of years. According to Search Engine Land, nearly 60% of all online searches are now conducted on a mobile device, and that number continues to climb.

Click to do a quick mobile friendliness test for your website.


4. Traffic isn’t converting into sales

A lot of sites have good web traffic, meaning that they are doing the hard work in terms of SEO and effective content marketing, but for certain reasons very little of that traffic is converting into actual sales. It could be that the user experience isn’t great in certain areas of your site and it’s costing you potential sales. Your website is the first impression that most prospects get of your company, and its main purpose is to convert visitors into leads. If this is not happening, it’s time to redesign.

We can use Google Analytics stats can find the holes in your site and tell you where most of your visitors are slipping through the net. Many dated websites lack effective calls to actions that convert users to customers. A call-to-action (CTA) is a button or link that you place on your website to drive prospective customers to become leads by completing an action on your landing page.


5. Website Speed

Website loading speed is a key factor in Google's ranking algorithm

Your website’s loading time is a major factor in people either staying or leaving the site and never returning. Google Page Speed Insights find out how long your site takes to load. If your score is not in the green then you need to rethink the elements of your website that are slowing it down. The main result of slow loading times is a high bounce rate.

The definition of bounce rate is the percentage of people who arrive on your site and leave without visiting a second page. A high bounce rate is an obvious sign of an outdated or poorly performing site. Website users usually leave a site hurriedly without visiting other pages because it didn't load fast enough, they don’t find what they are looking for instantly or simply do not like the look of it.



Note: This article was written and shared with us by our web design partners Opus Web Design



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Monday, March 12, 2018

10 Writing Tips for Web Designers

content writing , web
10 Writing Tips for Web Designers
There is more to web design than just code

Once you’ve created the perfect looking website, the next step will be to get traffic to it. It must be very frustrating to have a unique site without any visitors, but one needn’t worry about this. This could only be the result of you not applying techniques that are essential to you having a successful website. In order for your website to flourish, consider some of the following key tips to get traffic moving just the way you’d like it.


1. Have an SEO Strategy

For you to generate traffic, web users need to find your website. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) boosts the ratings of your site on Google, pushing it higher up the electronic hierarchy to make it among the first websites to pop up when someone searches for related keywords. Without an effective SEO strategy, users won’t be able to find your page when they enter relevant queries in a search engine. 

75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results which makes SEO very important – if you’re not part of this first page, how will potential viewers find your webpage?

Keywords are important i.e. you need to know what keywords and terms your audience will be searching for. It is important that you are aware of target keywords and how to link them with relevant pages on your site. Make sure that these keywords are relevant to the page that they’re on, because relevance scores in Google and other search engines will affect your page ranking. Overuse of certain keywords will have your readers lost and Google will penalize you in their ranking system. Google Analytics and Keyword Discovery websites are amongst some of the useful tools that will help with keyword phrases for your website.

Posting content that is relevant to your target audience is also vital. You can use blog posts, articles, videos and eBooks material for this. However, don’t let Google notice that your writing is purely geared for search engines. Google have developed algorithms that can spot automated and inorganic content from a mile away, so it’s important to keep your content organic.

Link building is one of the most important aspects of SEO. You can link to your own content but you can also have external websites that link to you (inbound links) or links on your webpage that direct users to external sites (outbound links). The correct use of internal and external linking tells Google and other search engines which pages on the internet are more important and relevant. Try to get other websites to link to your own content and try to provide links on your website to other domains to boost your SEO. 

Be smart about how you do this – you’ll get more SEO ranking benefit when you have both inbound and outbound links to or from authoritative websites rather than sites that no one cares about. People care about what authoritative websites say and do, and people value their content – websites that receive more inbound links from these sites will rank higher in search engines. However, if you completely flood your website with links to authoritative sites, this will be obvious to the SEO algorithms and your website may not rise to the top of the ranks as a result. Also, it may be very time consuming to acquire good inbound links, so prioritise your efforts. Pay attention to your variety of inbound and outbound links, where the links and going and where they are coming from.


2. Navigation

Make your site easy to navigate for your users. Design the site so that a reader will access the content fast. Do not clutter your homepage with so much content that hides the vital information. Keep in mind that the attention span of a viewer is only a mere eight seconds, so once they visit your site you need to capture their attention immediately. A great way of doing this is to include icons that will direct a reader to the information they desire such as a video, photo or article. Your page should not overstretch in terms of content length, scale it down to what is relevant. Remember the phrase “Quality, not quantity”.

Also, make sure your site is easy to navigate by search engine programs that determine your SEO. Paying attention to the names of your URLs will also allow search engine Spider programs to “crawl” through your pages better. Make sure you structure your URLs so that these Spider programs know where they’re going, for example:

Unstructured URL:

www.website.com/store/products/View?ID=1237863product=134987&locad=323

Structured URL:

www.website.com/products/cars


If a website is easier to navigate for search engine programs then you’ll move higher up in ranking systems. To create better navigation you can also find and delete broken links, generate sitemaps and use online tools to assess crawling ease.


3. Research

Research is key
Know who your target reader is, what they want and how to get them to your site. What is your target reader’s demographic? Are they teenagers, middle-aged or elderly people? What is their field of practice? Do they like controversy and scandals or are they into love stories? Answering these questions will help you to develop an effective online strategy. Stick to one type of reader because if you target them all, you will end up losing all of them.

A great way of knowing what your readers want is to see what kind of viewers are coming to your site. If you know who’s coming, you’ll be able to adapt your website to suit their needs. Once your website is up, use free tools from Google Analytics in order to track your viewers. You’ll be able to see many things such as who is visiting your website, where these people are coming from, how they are getting there and what devices they’re using. 

Knowing this information will allow you to find out if you’re attracting your target audience or not. If you find out that you’re not attracting the right target audience, you’ll want to understand why that is and make changes to correct it. You’ll be able to develop better strategies and ideas to be able to attract the correct audience you want.



4. Be Professional

Let your website reflect its developer and designer. It goes without saying that each site should be professional, so pay attention to detail. It should not look like everything was thrown together in a hurry. A reader will immediately skip your site if the first thing that they see is poor layout and design. 

The theme color, font size, and content setup should look like the work of a professional. A reader will not take your site seriously if they think that no time, money or effort went into creating it.

Once you have a specific target audience in mind it can also be helpful to research websites that are similar to yours. Assess your competition – who are your main competitors and what have their websites got that you don’t have? Looking around at what else is available will give you some interesting insights and ideas about how to improve your own website. Go further than a short Google search – dig deep online!


5. Avoid Sales Jargon

Yes, of course, you want to make money from your site but do not make it too obvious for your readers to see. What is written for sales on the print will not work for web content. “Order our product here” is more acceptable rather than “our products are the best.” A reader will switch from your website immediately if they notice that it’s more of an advertising site and not the informative one that you had promised. 

Some words and phrases are also just not understood by anyone, or worse, they don’t mean anything to the viewer at all! Think carefully about the meaning of the language you’re using. If you sound too smart or if people can’t understand the meaning there will be less interest.


6. Mobile Friendly

Mobile optimization

Mobile users log on to websites with their phones more than their computers. 80% of the internet users own a smartphone making them an excellent target for online content. Tailor your website to satisfy the needs of all its visitors. Once a reader has a problem accessing your site through any of their devices, they will visit your competitors instead. Google’s own research has found out that 61% of users feel this way.

It’s easy to make slight changes to your site in order to make it mobile phone friendly. With a restricted amount of space, it will be important to simplify your site so that things can easily fit on a mobile screen. If you’ve got small fingers it’ll be much harder to tap a small text on a small screen. The amount of white space is also important. When designing a website you can have a tendency to squeeze in as much information as you can, but this won’t look good on a tiny screen, so keep plenty of space in the design. 

Try not to use any pop-up windows because these will come up in new tabs that will take up the whole of a mobile device’s screen space, which can be off-putting to a viewer. If you do decide to use such pop-ups, make sure you give clear instructions to users about how to navigate their way back to the page they linked from. Also keep in mind to match the branding of your standard site to that of your mobile site because even though your site will be “moving” to a smaller screen, you don’t want it to lose its touch.


7. Focus on the Readers

If your content is interesting to your readers, you’ll increase the chances of them visiting your website and linking to it. In turn, such linking will boost your SEO. Do not focus too much on the technical side of the site but also think of your visitors. Write keyword phrases so that they are recognized as part of the topic and not just to boost your SEO rankings. Don’t fall into the incorrect practices such as using a single keyword more than twice in one paragraph.

With a large amount of content already out there, “quality content” should be the number one focus.

It goes without saying that all content needs to be properly proofread to ensure there are no mistakes, by reputable editors if necessary. As the focus has to be on your viewers, don’t try and accommodate all viewers’ needs and make sure you don’t lose your voice and message. Make content shareable but also consistent with the message you’d like your site to bring.

Once you have some decent content, you can diversify the next batch available to give your viewers something new to look forward to. Diversity will also allow for more ways to reach potential viewers. If you’ve been writing a lot of blogs, try publishing a few infographics on Twitter or other social media with clear links to your website or even some videos. Add a bit of variety and spice to your website through a variety of content. Your existing viewers and new viewers will be sure to appreciate it!


8. Update your Content Regularly


Ensure that the website uploads new content on a regular basis, but not just anything, real engaging content that adds value and is of use to the reader. When a visitor finds no recent posts in a while, they will go and look for information elsewhere. If you’re in need of ideas, research trending topics and emerging issues to get ideas on what to write about. 

A reader will log in to your site on a regular basis if they are confident that they’ll be able to access new content that is useful to them. Your content will be great for keeping interest, so keep it informative for your viewers, but don’t lose sight of a call to action – you don’t want your viewers to read your content and then run away. Including links to join mailing lists, subscribe or receive further updates can bring those users back in the future and wanting more.


9. Write for Everyone

The online community is international. Not every person that visits your site is smart. Keep in mind that your website’s viewers understanding of the English language varies. Keep it simple and coherent – do not use complex terminologies and words to impress a few readers whilst potentially losing a whole lot more. You want your users to get what they’re looking for, not to feel challenged by what you present them. If it’s too difficult to understand your message or content, a viewer can always head elsewhere.


10. Include Sharing Options

Include sharing options

Having a reader visit your site and enjoy your content does little. Give your visitors a chance to share your content with their friends and followers on social media. This works well for you as it generates traffic to your website and brings in new subscribers. If you’d like viewers to be able to share your content, you’ll have to do a little research in your own time, but this can bring a lot of benefit. 

If you’re sharing on social media, make sure you send it out at the correct times so that more people can see and share, such as in the evenings during the week. Make sure that your website content includes the relevant social media sharing buttons so that users can share with one click. These buttons to facilitate sharing are slick and easy to implement into a website’s design, at no cost to you.


Conclusion

Knowing how to make a website is only the first step to success. Ensuring that it is successful is the hard part of it. Always test that your website is running smoothly on a regular basis to give your visitors an easy navigation time when they log on to your site. Simple log in errors and lengthy loading times will make you lose readers to your competitors. Use a professional and reliable web service provider to host your website so that you know it’ll be problem and error free. Do your research, determine who your users are, who they will be and what they want – this will allow you to make the changes to your website and design. Time to get to work!


Author's Bio:

Kevin is a professional educator and a private tutor with over eight years of experience. He is also a content writer for various blogs about higher education, entertainment, social media & marketing. Currently, Kevin works as a part-time writer for eliteessaywriters.com. During his off time, Kevin enjoys traveling and cooking. Feel free to connect with him on Twitter, Linkedin & Google+.


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Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Essential Web Design Tips... From A Web Design Professional

web , web design
Essential Web Design Tips... From A Web Design Professional
Web Design Tips from a web design professional
Essential Web Design Tips... From A Web Design Professional

This is a guest post by Jennifer Scott, read more about Jennifer at the end of the article.

Let’s face it; there are a seemingly infinite number of websites currently hosted on the internet. At a current count, there’s actually around 1.3 billion, meaning that it’s safe to say that competition is fierce when it comes to making your website stand out from the crowd. So, when was the last time you consider the effectiveness of the design of your website?

Are users coming to your website able to tell exactly what your website is all about as soon as they land? Are users able to find the content or products they are looking for quickly and easily? Are you profiting or succeeding in the purpose that your website sets out to achieve?

If not, the chances are that you’re going to need to make some adjustments to your website’s design. Nowadays, there’s more and more emphasis on the User Experience of a website, a term that that is becoming increasingly common.

This is mainly because Google, the biggest search engine giant, has the sole purpose of giving their users the best online experience they possibly can, hence contributing to their success. However, if you’re not giving your users the best user experience possible, not only will Google lower your SEO ranking, your users will also take their business and online activity to one of your competitors.

Today, I’m going to talk you through everything you need to know about website design and share with you some of the best tips and tricks of the trade that I’ve discovered throughout my many years in the website design industry. This will help you address any design problems you may be facing, assisting in getting your website off the ground and helping you to boost your user experience and, therefore, your overall success.


#1 - Get Organised

Despite the creative nature of web design, organisation is still one of the most key skills

Perhaps the most important point to kickstart my list is telling you to get yourself organised. Design a website plan and research your target market. Instead of jumping straight into designing your website, take the time to check out your existing competition to see what they are doing and how their buyer journey works.

With that in mind, how is your buyer journey going to compete? All this takes is getting several bits of paper and literally mapping the journey of a user from your homepage to the final page where they’ll make their purchase or find the content that they want to read.

Planning your steps and web pages in this way can help you streamline and enhance your customer’s journey and your user experience.


#2 - Aim Only for the Highest Quality

I see too many websites on my internet travels that fail to address or meet the standard expectations that typical internet users today expect. There are many elements that either used to be popular on websites and aren’t anymore, or simply shortcuts that designers have taken and now directly affect the quality of the website.

For example, using complicated and slow-loading page transitions or animations only harms the user’s experience on your website. Sometimes you might find that your content is too wordy and therefore boring your user, forcing them to leave your website. Another popular problem I see all the time is websites using poorly implemented stock imagery.

Statistically, an internet user logs onto a website and has an attention span of around 8 seconds. If your website is slow loading or screams poor quality using the factors above, they’ll simply leave, and you’ll have missed out on a potential lead.


#3 - Mastering the Art of Content Writing

web design content writing
Content is king. Design is great but at the end of it all good content is key.

While the graphical and functional side of your websites is extremely important, it’s vital that you never overlook the importance of the content itself. Whether you’re designing a website for yourself or a client, the copywriting on every single page needs to be perfect in order to provide the best user experience.

For example, having poor grammar in your content can lead to your text becoming illegible, a sure-fire way to send users in the opposite direction. In this case, you can use online tools and grammar checkers, much like Via Writing, State of Writing, Academadvisor and Grammarix to check your content to ensure it’s perfect.

As a website designer, it could be safe to say that your writing skills are not your best trait, but it’s important you realise this in order to avoid these problems. If this is the case, never fear. There is a tonne of professional copywriting services out there that can help you write your content while you focus your energy on the design. Some of the leading copywriting you could use include UpWork, Best British Essays and UK Top Writers.


#4 - Using the Right Visuals

As I briefly mentioned above, it’s important that you avoid low-quality ‘stock’ images on your website because it gives a kind-of ‘tacky’ appeal to it. To elaborate on this point, the images are just as important as the functions, features and written content of your website, in some cases, even more so.

When choosing which images to use on your website, you first need to find the right balance between high-quality/resolution images but also that load quickly. While it might be tempting to upload a stunning 4K picture, this will take ages to load on a mobile device, making it pointless.

You also need to make sure that you’re using images that are relevant to the content and page of the website that the user is on. Relevant images help to add a new visual layer of understanding and communication to your web pages, rather than just being an element that tries to look nice.
“If you want to really stand out from the crowd, and the rest of your competition, I found it was a highly effective method to produce your own photos in-house as this has a much more personal feel and you can use the exact style of image that you’re after,”
explains Damian D. Montalto, a web designer for Best Australian Writers.


#5 - Don’t Hide White Space

white space in graphic design
White Space is key in all forms of design.

As a website designer, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to make every single aspect of your website attractive and engaging to your users. However, it’s important that you never underestimate the power of white space, more commonly referred to as ‘negative space’.

Using white space on your website allows you to professionally and cleanly divide up certain sections of your website, making it clear and easy to follow, understand and, of course, navigate. Although it may seem like you’re wasting precious pixels, especially when it comes to your homepage and the first things that your user sees, but a cleaner and easier to digest web page provides a far better user experience.


#6 - MOBILE OPTIMISATION

This is one tip I simply cannot stress enough, and it still shocks me how today there are so many active websites only that haven’t been optimised for mobile devices. It’s actually shocking. Here are the facts;
  • 80% of all internet users own a smartphone 
  • 61% of all users say they would never return to a website that wasn’t mobile optimised 
  • Over 50% of all internet traffic comes from a mobile device 
  • The average time spend on a mobile device per day is 7 hours 
These statistics speak for themselves. If you’ve ever been on a website from your own mobile device where you’ve had to pinch and zoom to access different features while trying to find the perfect balance so you can read the text clearly, you’ll know what a poor experience this is and why you’d never go back.

What’s more, failing to optimise your website for mobile devices is a no-no in Google’s SEO rulebook, and it will damage your SEO ranking, pushing you down the search engine results page.


#7 - Test, Optimise, Repeat

Just because you’ve finished designing your website, that unfortunately doesn’t mean that your job as a web designer is complete. After you’ve finished your website and before you launch, it’s important that you rigorously test your website to ensure all the features and pages are working perfectly. Of course, you don’t want people to come to your site only to find that it isn’t working properly.

After you’ve launched, however, it’s important that you keep checking back to your website to see what people like and don’t like. Are people reacting to your features in the way that you wanted them too or are they getting stuck and lost on some of the pages, potentially costing your business?
“About a year after we launched, we implemented heatmap software that showed each page and how long a user was spending on each page and where they were looking on the page. This allowed us to see exactly where users were stopping on a page and how we could tweak things to provide a better user experience,”
shares Ben Taylor, a web designer for Top Canadian Writers.

Keep refining and researching you make sure everything is in order and make small tweaks to make sure everything runs perfectly. Even years after your website has launched, it’s important to keep checking back regularly and to keep everything updated.

About The Author:

Jennifer works as online editor at UK Service Reviews. Also, she is a business developer that works in different areas of education, technology, security and various types of online marketing. Prior to business developing Jennifer was consultant at Deloitte, and managed security services provider and developer of a wide range of security solutions.



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Friday, January 19, 2018

Tips for Designing and Building a Multilingual Website

how to , how to create websites
Tips for Designing and Building a Multilingual Website
Create a multilingual website
English is not the only language out there, so why only design a website with one language in mind

As a modern society, the human race is continuing to grow, expand and connect to one another more instantaneously than ever before. In just a click of your mouse or a tap of your finger, you can be reading about the entire life and legacy of another human being that could have existed hundreds of years ago.

It’s amazing when you think about.

However, with such a connection comes the problem of language barriers. While you might be writing your content in English, statistics show that only 20% of the entire world population actually speaks the language, meaning your website is relatively inaccessible to the remaining 80%, which equates to around 6.6 billion people.

So, to counter this issue, you’ll want to design and build your next website as a multilingual platform that’s accessible to people around the world, or at least your target market. But how you do go about doing this? What problems and milestones will you need to overcome and what features does your website need to include?

To get you off on the right foot, here’s a complete guide to everything you need to know.

Getting Started

To start with, the first thing you’re going to want to consider is not actually the building of your website, but the content itself. You’re going to need to get it translated. Of course, translation services, such as Google Translate, are constantly improving and are updated or a near-daily basis.

However, these services definitely aren’t reliable if you’re looking for a professional finish. Ideally, you’re going to want to hire a human translator to edit and convert your content properly. For this, you have multiple options available.

Firstly, you could use translating companies such as International Translating or Big Assignments to translate your content for you on your behalf. This is of course if you have the budget. If you’re translating hundreds of pages of content, this can prove quite expensive, and you’ll need to find another way, perhaps by hiring someone long-term, such as a freelance translator from Upwork or Ukwritings.

If this is the case, or you plan on translating your content yourself, you’ll need to remember to proofread your content for errors, so your website remains professional. According to recent statistic, 59% of people said that they won't trust the company of service which has errors and mistakes on their website. So proofreading and editing is vital for your business reputation.

Implement Language Change Features

Of course, no multilingual website would be complete without the ability to actually change the language that the viewer wants to read your website in. Most commonly, you’ll notice that a lot of websites use a traditional drop-down menu which is clearly visible in the header or footer of the website.

In theory, you can put it wherever you want, but you want to make sure it’s clear and easy to see as soon as your website loads as people accessing your website will want to change it straight away.

Another key element to consider at this point is adding flag images to your drop-down menu. While this is a graphically powerful element to include, there are a few problems that come with this approach. Most notably is the fact that flags represent countries, not languages and many countries will have more than one official language.

Finally, you’re going to want to make sure that you refer to each language in its own language form, for easier identification purposes. For example, German should be referred to as ‘Deutsch’, French as Français, and Spanish as Español.

Checking Your Readability

You may not speak multiple languages but you can still create a multi language website with the right tools

While you may invest a lot of time in choosing fonts for your website and you’ve chosen one that looks clear and precise for your English readers, it’s important to make sure that the font will still be as legible when it comes to another language.

Sarah Stanford, a translator for Paper Fellows shares...
“One of the biggest problems that trip up multilingual websites up is choosing a fine and relatively small font that went translated, the symbols that appear in certain languages, such as the ‘n’ in ‘Español’ can become unreadable”

To alleviate this problem, be sure to check your character encoding, typically found in the head of your page. If your website is using Unicode, UTF-8 may work perfectly since it supports multiple languages, helping them to maintain their readability.

Reading Line for Line

One of the most common misconceptions that people have regarding other languages is the fact that languages don’t have a reading direction. However, the script in which the language is written in does. For example, Arabic script is read from right to left (RTL) whereas English and other European languages are left to right (LTR).

Of course, the vast majority of languages do read LTR, but if you include language settings for those who read RTL, this is something you’re going to need to consider. To achieve this easily, you simply need to mirror your website pages, which includes everything.

This means your menu bars, your icons, the layout of your navigation menu, the buttons and even the scrollbars will all need to be flipped and mirror what they are usually. Fortunately, there are a number of ways you can do this using basic code which can be found online, depending on what code you’re using to build your website.

Customising Your URL

Another important factor you’ll want to consider is the URL that your website is using when it changes the language. A country code top-level domain, more commonly referred to as ccTLD, are all linked to specific countries. For example, .fr is France and .es is for Spain.

This is such a vital part of the process that you’ll need to remember to complete since this is how search engines will help users to find the content they’re looking for. If you don’t implement it, users won’t be able to find your website easier. Of course, this will eat into your budget, but the ROI is worth it in the long run.

For more information on using ccTLD, as well as for your sub-domains and sub-directories, check out this Google guide on the matter.


Creating a Multilingual Store

If you’re creating a blog with content, this point may not concern you, but if you’re creating a multilingual website that sells products, this is very important as there are a few aspects you’ll want to consider.

Firstly, are all the products that you’re selling on your store available in all the countries you’re trying to sell in? If not, you’ll need to find a way to make certain products only available in a certain language, but of course, this solely depends on what framework and store platform you’re using.

Tom Dewis, SEO-expert at Ox Essays shares, 

What you have to consider is the currency options that are available to your customers. The cost and price tag of each product will need to be converted automatically in regard to the language that is selected, or using a clearly placed drop-down menu where users can choose their preferred currency.

Finally, you’ll want to consider your posting and delivery options. For example, if you’re not going to be able to sell products in France, you need to make this clear in your terms and conditions.

Consider the Details

This is one point that will solely depend on the content of your website and blog, but it’s definitely worth bearing in mind throughout the entire building process. Many cultures will have a different outlook on certain subjects in life, for example, sense of humor, sexuality, gender equality and symbolism.

When translating your content, be sure that you won’t offend anybody’s beliefs with the content you’re posting to avoid it becoming a problem in the future.

What’s more, if you’re using Captchas on your website, have you investing time in making sure the Captchas are in each language rather than just in English? The same if you’re adding citations to your website for this process, be sure to use tools like Cite It In to make sure they’re correct.

Finalising Your Content

Now that your website is nearing completion regarding the multilingual side of things, you’ll need to invest time in finalising your content to ensure that it’s perfect for release. The first thing you’ll want to do is to make sure that all your content has been translated properly.

One simple way to do this is using a tool for Easy Word Count. Using this tool, you can copy and paste in your original content and then your translated content and then refer to the word count. If the word counts are roughly the same, give or take a few words, you’ll know that nothing has been missed during the translation process.

Secondly, you’re going to want to check your translated content to make sure that it doesn’t breach any plagiarism requirements. While your original content may not be plagiarised, your translated copy might be. However, this is easy to check using plagiarism checking services like Academized or Plagium.

Conclusion

In reality, there is a tonne of features and aspects of your website you’ll need to consider when designing and building a multilingual website, but this will solely depend on the kind of website you’re building, its purpose and the industry that you’re operating in.

However, this article has covered the majority of the basics that you’ll need to consider and should give you the best shot at creating a successful multilingual website.


About The Author

Brenda Berg is a professional with over 15 years of experience in business management, marketing and entrepreneurship. Consultant and tutor for college students and entrepreneurs. She believes that constant learning is the only way to success. You can visit her personal blog at Letsgoandlearn.com



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Monday, November 27, 2017

Free Website Templates

creating websites , free
Free Website Templates
Free Website Templates
Sample of the free website templates available

If you are looking for free website templates then you have come to the right place. We have scoured the internet looking for the best totally free, website templates, including fully HTML5 templates, responsive template, animated templates, parallax scrolling templates, templates with bootstrap and much more. So whether it is a simple one column website template you need or a fully responsive business template with eCommerce capabilities you can find it here. Of course all there website templates will require knowledge of HTML and CSS so if you need to brush up on that first then click on the links to learn more.

We have also ranked the providers by stars to give you an idea of both how good we rate the quality of their templates, the ease of use of the website, range of website templates available, design and visual appeal of templates, live demo of templates etc.


Free CSS

Rating :

Free CSS has 2642 free website templates coded using HTML & CSS in its gallery. The HTML website templates that are showcased on freecss.com are some of the best that can be found in and around the net. The website itself is very basic though and as there is no search function to allow you to filter through the website templates so you have to sift through them all one at a time to find out their features, this is a major drawback.
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OS Templates

Rating :

OS Templates offer some of the best website templates that can be found on the net. They  update their website regularly with premium and free HTML templates as well as PSD templates.
Whether you are a private person, a freelancer or a company, you are free to use their free website templates for both your commercial and personal websites. There is no search function to help you filter through the templates, which is a pity although the template previews are a decent size and are labelled by features such as HTML5 and responsive. At time of reviewing there are 270 free web templates available.
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Styleshout

Rating :

There are currently a very limited (22) amount of free templates available here but they are all high in quality and definitely worth a visit. Beautiful handcrafted HTML5 and CSS3 website templates  with good attention to the details making them premium quality but free of charge. All designs are free of charge and available for personal and commercial projects, in exchange for accreditation. 
They also say their templates are updated on a regular basis. Again, no site search but templates can be categorized by label to help you find the right one for your needs.
Visit Website


Webflow

Rating :

"Webflow gives designers all the power of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But instead of writing code, you manipulate the real, working website, visually,  just like your favorite design tool." That is the blurb from the webflow website, the reality is that it is yet another Drag-and-Drop site builder similar to wix, weebly, squarespace and many others. I have included it here,as opposed to the others, as it is newer and people may not have heard of it. Like most site builders you start off on a free plan with limited functionality and can upgrade from there for a fee. Like all the others it is still a good option if you can't code, don't mind forced ads/branding and need limited website functionality.


Medium

Rating :

This is actually on article with a limited (37) number of free website templates as opposed to a dedicated template website but I have included it here as it includes some excellent premium quality templates for free. No search capability but as there are limited templates it's easy to scroll through and find one that's right for you with features like flat design, responsive layout, jQuery sliders etc.
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Free Website Templates

Rating :

There are around 350 free templates here at time of reviewing as well as many other premium (paid) templates. These free templates really are no strings attached - you can download each template for free, modify it and create your own website with it. If you're a web design company, you can even use it for your clients as long as you don't charge them anything for the templates. You're allowed to use the templates without linking back. The website does have a search function to help you filter through although it is basic. The templates previews are large though which helps you quickly sift through them.
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HTML5Up

Rating :

Again, there are currently a limited (45) amount of free templates available here but they are also all high in quality and definitely worth a look. They are all hand coded HTML5 and CSS3, fully responsive website templates making them premium quality but free of charge. All templates are available for personal and commercial projects, in exchange for accreditation. Again, no site search or even labeling but with so few it hardly matters. There are live demo previews though which allows you to fully explore the templates without needing to download and test.
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Templated

Rating :

I like templated. They keep things simple. A quality collection of 866 simple CSS, HTML5 & Responsive site templates released for free under the Creative Commons license. The templates are all top notch and feature live demo preview. If only they had a categorization system or site search to more easily find the right template, the only flaw in an excellent website.Visit Website


Theme Wagon

Rating :

There are a limited number (175 at time of reviewing) free templates at theme wagon but they are all of a very good quality with premium features such as quality design, parallax scrolling and responsive layouts in many of the free templates. There is a site search function but it also includes the premium templates in results so be careful you don't fall in love with a template before realising you'll have to pay for it!
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W3 Layouts

Rating :

This is probably my favourite place to get free website templates. There is a huge selection (2881) at time of reviewing and yet it is easy to find what you want as all templates are categorized as well as labelled for search so you can easily find a template that is right for your website as well as previewing each template in demo mode. In terms of usage,  you are not allowed to remove back-link to w3layouts in template unless you have donated for template, this is probably the only downside. But you can use the resources for personal and commercial projects.
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*This article was created by our friends at free design resources who will be launching their new website on January 1st. We will be writing more about that at the time but if you want to be the first in the know be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.


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