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Are there any valid points to discourage a potential client from wanting to use Web site templates?

Posted: May 24th, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Design | Tags: , , | No Comments »
graphic design, website design
Photo by Designecologist from Pexels

Templates are a quick fix for a cheap client. However, in most cases, cheap clients are the most trouble and will cost you more time and money than you care to deal with. Many times the client will want you to customize the template more to fit their needs. I tell them that if they go the template route, that there might be additional design fees. I also explain that there is still HTML and back-end production and programming work that must take place, and depending on the template design, this could cause problems if the template was not designed properly to fit into HTML, thus costing them more money. Most important, I explain to the client that someone else, more than likely, has this same design for their site and that it would, in the long run, be better to make a custom designed site. I do think templates have their place in the design world, but I am a custom designer and my clients want custom art. Every client is different, but it all depends on money and ultimately what the client is wanting to achieve with their Web site.


7 UX/UI Design Web Tips to Look Better Website

Posted: February 8th, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Design | Tags: , , , | No Comments »
UI/UX Design Websites

In today’s world, websites form an important part of most businesses. UI/UX design web content has emerged as necessities rather than luxuries for firms. Trained professionals are hired to take care of this aspect that makes the websites more engaging and attractive for users. UI/UX design webpages are very important to boost sales and garner profit.

Here are a few tips by which you can enhance the quality of your web page.

Focus on the content on your website

As is the popular saying, Content is King. Users will not be impressed with fancy designs if the content in your website is substandard. Most UI/UX design tips include suggestions for improvement of the content. It should add to the UI/UX design web page and complement it. The site will be flawless only if it has great content in it.

Write the text in an engaging manner

Tips for UX design not only focus on the content but also on the way it is presented on your webpage. For the users to understand and connect with whatever it is that you have on your page, they need to be extremely well presented. Check the font size and spacing for UI/UX design inspiration. Make sure that the entire content is properly visible and looks attractive

Use contrasting colors and designs for more effective presentation

The choice of color and patterns are extremely important according to most UI/UX design agencies. Anyone with a UI/UX design course will be aware of the importance of contrasting colors on a public web page. This makes the content more attractive and pleasing to the eyes.

Use pictures and other pictorial representation smartly

According to most UX design tips, users connect more with web pages that have a higher number of pictures. The inherent characteristics of human beings are to understand graphs and pictorial representation of data better than other forms. Thus, include pictures in your website wherever they are relevant. It should not be abrupt and complement the topic. This way you will be able to attract higher traffic to your website with ease

Make sure of the quality of the images that you use

One of the Fundamental UI design tips is to always use high definition images. If not only makes your website look good but also makes sure that people operating various browsers connect equally well with the content on your web page. Using standard definition can often result in poor image quality in some devices and browsers.

Employ an interactive design

Most UI/UX design agencies employ an interacting button system so that the people feel like they are clicking one on screen. Even though the purpose is served if you use just flat buttons, the webpage becomes less engaging and users lose interest pretty fast. An interactive user interface makes sure that all your visitors are converted into leads.

Use touch gestures to make your website more interactive

To make your web page more interactive and user-friendly, you can use touch gestures in them. Add these gestures to visual representations of data and graphical icons and you will achieve a higher level of aesthetics on your website. Apart from making your page look attractive, they will also act as a major fascination for visitors.

Boost your sales with a trained developing agency

Using these tips, you can easily improve the build quality of your UI/UX design webpage and attract more viewers. Get in touch with us to get the best web solutions and make sure that your website is unique and out of the box.

Conclusion

All the potential customers will perceive your website as the very first impression. Quality websites are a must for maintaining a robust online presence. Follow these UI/UX design web tips for attaining the best quality of your website pages. Get in touch with us today for availing finest services from our design experts who will create the best websites.

Author Bio:

Manan Ghadawala is a regular contributor to Writerzone.net and the founder of 21Twelve Interactive which is one of the best mobile app development company in India and the USA. He is an idealistic leader with a lively management style and thrives raising the company’s growth with his talents. He is an astounding business professional with astonishing knowledge and applies artful tactics to reach those imaginary skies for his clients. His company is also recognized by the Top Mobile App Development Companies.


9 Great Website Ideas to Try Out With WordPress

Posted: October 4th, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Design | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

Thinking of building a website with WordPress but have no clue what it should be about? Don’t worry, there are plenty of ideas to try out. When starting anything, especially an online venture, you need to know what works and what doesn’t. 

After all, you will be spending a great deal of time and (possibly) money on it, so you have to make sure you get a return on investment. With that said, keep on reading to discover 10 website ideas that you can try building with WordPress.

Why You Should Use WordPress

Before we dive into the WordPress website ideas, let us discuss why WordPress is definitely a go-to platform.

While there are many tools you can use to build a website, WordPress stands out for the following reasons:

  • User-friendly, especially for beginners;
  • The CMS is open-source and free;
  • Plenty of hosting possibilities. Many providers offer specialized WordPress web hosting for best possible performance;
  • Plenty of good free and premium plugins for endless customization and extending of functionality;
  • Plenty of excellent free and premium themes;
  • WordPress sites usually rank high in terms of search engine optimization (SEO);
  • The majority of themes are mobile responsive;
  • A dedicated community for support;

Try These 10 Great Website Ideas

Now that you know why WordPress is the top choice, here are 10 of the best WordPress website ideas.

1. Video Games

If you are a fan of video games, then consider writing a blog or making videos of them and uploading them to your WordPress website. You can do so many things in regards to video games, including walkthroughs, hints, tips, and reviews. 

You can easily build a following, which you can also monetize through affiliate marketing (more on this later). And if you can live stream the gameplay, that can even get you more of a following.

2. E-Commerce 

If you are looking for a way to make money selling products, then an e-commerce site is one of the best WordPress website ideas. Although you will have to work extra hard for the store to get noticed, it is worthwhile. 

Once you overcome the slow buildup, your store will keep you well-fed perpetually. You can easily create such a website with WordPress and use a plugin like WooCommerce to process payments.

3. Learning Platform

Selling courses online has also become one of the top ways people make money these days. There is no shortage of free content that can teach people how to do anything.

However, everyone knows that some of the best content is paid content. If you’re highly skilled in something and can teach it, then you can make money online. WordPress is a good place to build a website to impart knowledge and skill at a price.

4. Affiliate Blog

An affiliate blog is made for the express purpose of promoting products for other people and businesses. You get an affiliate link, which you casually insert into the content (make sure it is relevant and engaging content). 

When the reader clicks on that link and purchases the product, you get a commission. You have probably seen these types of blogs before. They usually have titles like “Top 10 Toaster Ovens to Buy in 2019.”

5. Job Boards

Many people go online to look for jobs – 39% of Americans are job seekers and 79% of them search for jobs online.  And after tons of hours separating the wheat for the chaff, they find them. If only there was a premium service website that could simplify this process for them. 

And with WordPress, you can create such a website where you can provide them with job listings with a high chance of getting hired. You can charge them a monthly fee to have access to the listings – you can even charge employers for posting listings.

6. Travel

People love reading about travel adventures, whether they are planning on taking a trip or not. So if you are constantly traveling, consider creating a WordPress website and writing about your travel experiences. 

Make sure to also grab your camera and take breathtaking photos of important landmarks and great views. You can even provide people with travel tips, such as pre-flight checklists or must-visit sites in certain countries or regions.

7. Fashion

Some people have no sense of style, but if you do, then why not help them out? Fashion is something that will never go out of style cause people are always looking for the trendiest apparel and accessories. 

This is one of the other great website ideas since you can also place affiliate links on the content. Once you establish yourself as an industry professional, your recommendations will carry a lot of weight.

8. Self-Help

The world is a stressful place, and everyone needs someone to teach them the art of getting by. Every day, people need help with something, and if it is something you have experience with, you can help them. You can offer actionable tips and advice or just let them know that they are not alone. Such a website is easy to create with WordPress and has the potential to gain a large following.

9. Cooking and Recipes

If you are a good cook who loves to try new recipes and experiment, then why not share your knowledge? Come up with your recipes and share tips on how to cook them

You can easily create a cooking website with WordPress. And if you gain enough of an audience, you can even be approached to do paid reviews of cooking items.

Create any Kind of Website With WordPress

With WordPress, you can bring a lot of website ideas to life. No matter what you love, whether it is video games, traveling or cooking, WordPress allows you to create a website for them. 

Even if you want to sell products or courses, WordPress supports that too. While this list is by no means exhaustive, these 9 WordPress website ideas are a good start.


7 Web Design Trends Every 21st Century Website Should Follow

Posted: February 2nd, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Design | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

A well designed website attracts more visits, have more activities, have better on-site time and rank higher on search results. Your site can’t achieve this if you’re still stuck in the last era characterized by desktop-only optimized site, regular layouts, dull colors, tiny fonts, slow responsiveness and loading speed…

You may be able to create an attractive website by hiring a professional web designer or developer, but to make it truly functional and achieve your online goals, it’s important that, in addition; you get the services of a good SEO specialist.

It’s difficult to balance functionality and great content with aesthetics, but that’s the only way you can reduce bounce rates on your website and boost user experience – which are key to avoid being penalized by Google and other major search engines. For a 21st century website, here are 7 important trends to follow.

1. Mobile-friendly site

Google index mobile devices first, which gives the advantage to mobile-friendly sites in the 21st century. A report showed that mobile phone users were responsible for more than 43% of traffic on the World Wide Web in 2016 alone. The year 2015 experienced a bit above 35%. This means that by 2020, more than 75% of the traffic on the internet will come from mobile devices.

With that in mind, it’s only wise to design your website to fit the screens of smartphones and maybe tablets. As Google rolls out the mobile first index, sites that are accessible via mobile devices will rank higher than those that aren’t.  As for that, you need to choose a fast hosting if you want to create a mobile-friendly site. 

To make it easy for websites, Google also introduced the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) – an open source project that makes it easy for websites to load more easily and faster on phones and tablets. The AMP strips down code for traditional mobile sites, runs scripts in parallel and used external resource for media files. Take advantage of this open source coding standard to boost conversion rate.

2. Progressive web apps

Web designers and software engineers have begun to work together to blend the web and app into one. Since apps are a main part of mobile usage, incorporating it into your website will definitely boost user experience. Some sites have already started adding elements like splash screen, push notifications and animated page transition. The good part about the progressive web app is that you won’t need to install it before use. It also loads quickly and is very easy to use.

3. Responsive design

There’s no way anyone can talk about web design and not include responsiveness somehow. It’s almost gone from just a trend to a principle. Having a responsive web design means setting up your website to fit into the screen of mobile phones, desktops, TVs, tablets and other browsing devices. In as much as this has become very common and possible for every regular website, it’s expected that Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and other new forms of technology will also key into the trend.

4. Bold Fonts & Bright Colors

No matter how well set up your website is, you need a bold font to get your visitors captivated and focused on your content. Make it easy to read and that it stands out in the white space. A survey showed that people who read digital content have a very low attention span. This means that web visitors are likely to just take a look at what’s on your welcome page for a few seconds and if they aren’t captivated, they bounce off to another competitor’s site. So, use fonts and colors that make everything unique. Since you are aiming to convert visitors to subscribers or loyal customers, look for the right font and design that will keep them for as long as possible.

The good thing with fonts is that they look like images and take up less space. Photos slow down the loading speed of your website, but fonts scale the size of your topography without having any effect on the performance of the site. In fact, fonts and bright colors make your call-to-actions (CTA) more pronounced by creating clean lines on the pages of your website.

Besides, if you take a look at many websites these days, you won’t find the once popular clickable images, hero images and large icons any more. This is because larger typographical expressions are pretty much taking over.

5. Scrolled animations triggers

Users are more likely to scroll down some more when they are engaged by advanced triggered animations. These scrolled animation triggers have been around for a while, but there are new ways they are being used by modern websites.

Look for animation triggers that boost conversion rate. Strategic, educational and minimalist types are usually the best. These triggers also give your site a feel of uniqueness. It’s better than just having menus and buttons scattered all over the pages of your site.

6. Irregular grid layouts

The design theory of giving each page on your website its own theme by combining all the elements on the pages together with the help of grid layouts have been used by web designers in the past. WordPress and other Content Management Systems (CMS) use grid layout to design their templates. But recently, the way it’s being used is different.

Web designers had more options for grid layout design when the CSS grid was introduced in 2017. This gave them the chance to create a more modern style of design by using irregular layouts and neutral space that makes content easy to navigate and scan through.

7. Increase in micro-interactions usage

Since the use of social media networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram keeps growing by the day, micro-interactions have started gaining popularity. Users no longer want to just like a post or comment. They want to be able to use emojis and animated icons to show how they feel about a write up, a photo or even when sending private messages.

Formerly, pages refresh when you click on fluffy animated icons. This usually discourages visitors from getting fully engaged on the page content. But including these micro-Interactions in the interactive portion of a website will boost the site’s user experience and certainly increase conversion rate.


4 Essential Website Design Tips for Piano Teachers

Posted: July 26th, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Articles, Design | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

The piano is one of the most versatile instruments in music, spanning several genres from classical to jazz and contemporary pop music. If you are a piano teacher, this diversity of styles should guarantee a steady flow of students, but without a good website, they simply won’t know who you are and how to get in touch. To help you establish a successful studio, we’ve put together four essential website design tips for piano teachers. Let’s begin our journey.

1. Embrace the Internet

The first step that many piano teachers need to take has less to do with domain names and javascript and more to do with their way of working. There was a time when piano teachers thrived through word of mouth referrals. You may still attract some students this way, but with increased competition and a highly mobile and selective generation of students (and their parents), one of the best ways to make yourself known is by using the internet.

The internet has also become an excellent medium for piano teachers who wish to further their education. Excellent programs like the online master of music in music education can be completed from any location thanks to the internet and Rutgers Online. You could even become a well-known authority on music just by publishing your views online or boost your reputation by posting videos of your performances, lessons, and masterclasses.

2. Get the Right Design – at an Affordable Budget

To harness the internet’s huge potential, you need the right website. You’ll want to use the services of a professional web designer, but don’t pay too much when you’re first starting out. With a budget of $500-$1,000, you should be able to get your website up and running with the right design and functionality to attract visitors and secure new students.

3. Don’t Promote Yourself – Sell the Experience You Offer

Today’s customer is wary of self-promoting teachers who fill their websites with information about their own achievements and fail to mention the true benefit of becoming a student: the enriching process of learning an instrument. While it’s important to mention your qualifications, awards, and achievements, it’s equally important to describe your teaching philosophy, the approach you take to students, and the things you do to develop students musically, spiritually and psychologically.

4. Answer Students’ Questions Before They Ask them

Students and parents searching for a new piano teacher usually have a few common questions in mind: has the teacher completed a college degree or online MMME Program? Do they take beginners? How much do they charge? Do they train students for enjoyment, prepare them for exams and competitions, or both?

What musical styles do they specialize in and can they teach across genres? Do they give lessons at their studio, at students’ homes, or via Skype? If your website answers these questions, you’re more likely to get queries from students who are a good fit for your studio.

Conclusion

With a well-designed, comprehensive website that introduces your skills, methodology and teaching philosophy to prospective students, you’ll be well on your way to building a successful piano teaching studio. The more time, patience, and effort you put into your website, the more successful you will be.


Defining Project Scope – Scope Creep

Posted: July 21st, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Business, Design | Tags: , , , , , | No Comments »

You’ve met with your client and defined your project’s goals. You understand the scope and have worked with the client to define a clear goal. You breathe a sigh of relief, knowing everything is in place for you to get started. But then things start to change …

Suddenly, the client has a better idea of what you can do to make the project a success, which, yes, will involve some additional work you didn’t talk about earlier. You’ve worked hard, but the client now wants to change direction, making everything you’ve done a waste. What you thought was a straight shot to launch has turned into a meandering journey through the backroads of indecision.

Welcome to the wonderful world of scope creep.

What is scope creep?

You’ve probably heard the term somewhere. But what is it? Is it some sort of curse? If you say “scope creep” three times in front of your laptop, will the simple website design you’re working on turn into an an email campaign, social media contest, anda logo redesign?

Read More


The Disadvantages of Using a Free Website Builder for Your Business

Posted: July 13th, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Articles, Design | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

We all love free products to help us personally and professionally. But when it comes to free website builders, they’re not necessarily the best things to consider. While free web builders have their advantages in terms of a free website and the many free templates that come with them, there are many more disadvantages stacked up against them.

Website Builders Often Come Branded

It’s great for small businesses to be able to get their website online quickly and in the cheapest possible manner. However, free web builders often need to be linked back to the builder so your website will look unprofessional. Usually, at the bottom of your site, you will have a “powered by” link, and that generally consists of “Powered By Free Website Builder”. It doesn’t look professional at all and it will make customers think you’re not serious.

Such Builders Aren’t as “Free” as They Make Out

While the setup of a website using the builder’s features is often free, there are many other features that you could benefit from that aren’t free. For example, builders will give you disk space and bandwidth to keep your website online. However, you will usually miss out on other features such as email accounts, MySQL database, and sometimes even a parked/addon domain name – which means you’ll have to use their subdomain as well.

Limited Storage

We stated above that features are very limited and the storage and bandwidth often given to you aren’t beneficial. It will often run out quickly and that means your website is either going to go down or you’re going to be unable to upload additional content until you pay for extra features.

Limited Customization

Free Web Builders often make out they are easily customizable, and while that may be true, customization is limited. This means that you can only be as creative as the tool allows, which is something that puts many webmasters off. You will never get the chance to create that dream website you have set out to achieve, and in reality, the only way of achieving such a website is to get it custom made or take advantage of the many other resources out there.

Additional Advertisements

You will get the “powered by” link at the bottom of your site as basic, but some builders also require you to place advertisements. This isn’t at all professional, and often, you will have to advertise one of your competitors.

Free website builders, of course, provide many other benefits, but from looking at the disadvantages above, it would be much wiser to consider a free WordPress theme on a WordPress CMS installation. You’ll get more freedom and when your business grows you’ll also have access to premium themes.

If you have an online masters in business administration (online MBA), you will already know how important presentation is to a business. If you don’t have a degree, presentation of a website is the key to the success of any business.

Free web builders don’t give off the professional presentation that is often desired by customers, but they do provide many other benefits for smaller businesses on a tight budget, so they can be considered in that respect. You can also use web builders to create blogs but you should consider using WordPress; learn how to start a blog.


Websites in Real Life

Posted: June 8th, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Funny Stuff | Tags: , , , | No Comments »