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UI Design Web Design

7 Handy Tips To Improve Your Website Design

Website Design

It is a known fact that today’s business is conducted online. From shopping to marketing, to communicating with providers, people depend on the Internet to help them perform everyday tasks. Without a website, businesses, blogs, and brands can’t be successful. That’s the reason why everyone is on the internet today. With millions of websites, it becomes extremely challenging to stand out from the crowd. A website usually has 4-5 secs to create an impression on visitors; that’s very little time. Therefore, website designers must ensure that they create a website design that ensures a delightful, user-friendly experience.

We often talk about the latest design trends, user experience enhancement, interface enhancement, and a lot of other things. The idea is always to keep improving the website experience by offering the best. However, a lot of times, we tend to forget some basic actions which can elevate the website design and experience to a whole new level. Here are a few tips.

Use White Space

First things first – Whitespace doesn’t mean a lot of white color, its the way designers term the empty space or negative space. Research and studies suggest that the use of white space in the left and right margins, and in between paragraphs, increases reader comprehension by almost 20 percent. Adding white space means more user interaction, the page looks better, and you can highlight your CTAs with more ease if you have enough white space to go around. It balances the visual elements by creating a visual hierarchy. Whitespace increases content legibility and acts as a separator.

Optimize The Page Speed

Website speed has long been discussed in the world of marketing, and it’s one of the main reasons why a lot of visitors bounce off from certain websites. People are impatient on the internet. They don’t like to wait and expect instant responses to their queries. If your website doesn’t load within a few seconds, to be honest, 2-3 seconds at the max, the visitors will most likely bounce off looking for other options. 

You can check your page load speed through a Google-free service, where you can get information on your page speed. Google will also offer you some suggestions for improving your page load time on Mobile and Desktop. 

To improve your page speed, start by compressing all your images before loading them onto your website. The image file size is one of the leading causes of a slow page speed — using websites like compressor.io can help you dramatically speed up each webpage you own. There are several ways to optimize page speed.

Create a Responsive Website Design

With the revolutionary advancement of mobile and other devices, your website is most likely to be accessed from devices other than PCs and laptops. It’s critical that your website is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate no matter what type of device your audience uses to access it. 

Google started penalizing sites that aren’t optimized for mobile devices from 2015, making the need for responsiveness even more crucial. This is probably the most valuable way to improve your website’s usability. A responsive design will do wonders for your website in terms of SEO and will help you position yourself higher in SERPs. So, create a mobile version of your website, use mobile plugins, and convert your website into a Responsive Web Design (RWD).

Make a Clear Call To Action

Some interesting facts – SAP found that orange CTA buttons boost conversion rates by 32.5%, while Performable found that red CTA buttons boost rates by a whole 21%. In creating buttons for your website you should think about color and the psychology of color. Different colors evoke different messages. Think about the message that you want to evoke for a user (trust, experience, intelligence) and choose your colors wisely. 

A second thing to consider is the actual words you use for your buttons. The words should include a verb or an action word that excites the user to do something. Use actionable words in them such as discover, start, learn, etc. Calls to actions (CTAs), clearly marked with an action word enable your website users to more easily navigate your site and get exactly what they want in the location they expect to find it.  

Utilize Social Media To The Fullest

22 percent of the world’s population is on Facebook, Instagram has 800 million active monthly users, Linkedin has more than 540 million user profiles, and Twitter has 100 million daily active users. These figures are staggering, which is why it’s important for your website to offer social buttons to your visitors. There’s a chance that they will like what they see, share their thoughts on their profiles, and boost your presence even further. 

Any website improvement ideas should involve taking advantage of social sharing and social following. Social sharing options are a fantastic way to improve website design. Use social media icons of different social media sites to allow users to share your content. The idea is to get guests to share your content when they like what they read. Sharing content puts it out for everyone else to see without you having to do any work. This will allow your website to become more popular and gain site visitors that would have never known about you otherwise.

Use Eye-Catching Images In Website Design

People across the Internet are getting smarter and faster at judging company websites before deciding if they want to browse the site further. When they first visit your site, they can easily pick out a generic stock photo they’ve already seen elsewhere or that resembles the non-personal style of stock photography. Using stock photography can decrease trust and also stand out as generic and non-unique.

With an audience that only has an attention span of 5-6 seconds, you need to create a lasting first impression that easily gets the main points across. This should be done with short, powerful sections of content and applicable photographs/icons that are sectioned off by clear and concise headers.

Website design is the foundation of user experience and needs constant attention and improvement. Are you looking to revamp your website? Or, need help in deloping your website from scratch? Talk to our experts now!

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Brand & Identity Design UI Design Web Design

5 reasons To Not Use Stock Images On Your Websites

Stock Images
Stock Images

At the time of building a website, it is important to only select components that will positively impact your brand and support the objectives of the website. It especially holds true when it comes to choosing the right images for the website. It is important to understand and acknowledge the worth of custom photography and its positive impact on the brand. Some people might argue that custom photography is very costly as compared to stock images, but in reality, the initial higher cost is totally worth the investment in the long run. Here are some key reasons why custom photography is preferable over using stock images.

1. Clash of visions

No matter how professional the stock photo, it will always reflect someone else’s vision. The interpretation of the idea, concept, and emotion that you wish to convey will always differ from others. A picture is worth a 1000 words, but those words need to be yours. With custom photography, you have control over what thoughts and emotions your website conveys. 

From a marketing perspective,  that provides a great advantage. It is important to connect with prospective buyers on an emotional level. Whether it is a personal purchase decision or one for business, emotions and feelings always have an impact on decisions. Emotions drive people to take decisions, and that’s why you need to convey your emotions and vision through your pictures. If you use stock photos, your vision may be misinterpreted, and you may never strike where you wish to. 

2. It weakens your brand’s authenticity

An authentic brand is one that presents itself with honesty and transparency. When visitors interact with your brand, through your website, they must feel as if they are interacting with a human. Authentic brands are relatable, trustworthy, and thus successful. According to a study, 83 percent of consumers surveyed said that trust drives their loyalty to a brand.

Using stock photography is easy, but putting up actual photos of your business or employees will strengthen your connection with your visitors. Opting for meaningless stock photos showcase a very gloomy and dicy brand image. It runs you into a risk of losing out on customers. Instead of stock images, make choices for your visual content that will cultivate a deeper relationship with your clients and customers. Professional, well-lit photos of your real employees doing their real jobs will carry more value and build more trust than yet another stock photo.

3. Short-term cost vs long-term cost

It’s an obvious fact that hiring a professional photographer will incur larger initial costs than using stock photos. Plus, there are additional expenses involved like hiring professionals, arranging the equipment, or outsourcing the entire project to shoot. But, stock images also come with additional costs other than the licensing fee, which by the way are also very high. 

The recurring loyalty charges can be quite high depending on the quality of the image and how often you want to use it. Additionally, there’s also the time costs – it’s a tiresome job to look through hundreds and thousands of photos to find the “perfect photos” for your website. 

When you use custom photography, you create your personal library of images that you own. These images can be used in the future without any cost being involved. With stock photography, there are often limitations on how you can use the image and for how long.

4. Similar photos can create confusion

Imagine the same lady posing as a customer support executive on hundreds of websites, under the contact us or support section. Even if not on hundreds of websites, there’s always a possibility that your competitor and you like the same stock photo. Or you both choose the same stock art to create your logos. The customers may get confused and that’s not good for your customers. 

The confusion can make people refer to a competitor’s brand to their friends and families. This can blindly divert your business. Losing customers is bad news.  But, it’s especially painful to lose customers to such an easily avoided misstep. That’s not all, what if your competitor does something unethical and his or her reputation takes a hit, your reputation might be impacted as well.

That’s why it’s a good practice to use customized photos for artwork. A unique logo and authentic photos of your products, services, and employees help you stand out from the competition.

5. Copyright issues

We have saved the most dangerous con for the last. Lawsuits are tricky and can get you in some serious trouble. And, they are costly too. So, if your goal is to save money by using stock art, be aware of the possible legal dangers. Stock art can end up costing way more than real images, once you fall into a legal trap.

You can’t trademark most images that include stock art. Attempting to do so could get you in trouble. And, stock art licenses include more potential pitfalls than just trademark issues. You open yourself up to litigation if you violate the specific terms of use for the stock art you purchase. Worse than that, copyright law is no-fault.

Read More About Web Designing With Type On Image

Therefore, instead of stock art, hire a professional photographer to take original pictures for your business. And, hire professional graphic designers to create a logo and visual assets for your brand. If that sounds way too much for you, hire a professional company to do everything for you. Have a word with our experts and learn more.

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Blog Brand & Identity Design SEO Web Design

Top 10 Hacks To Create Effective Exit Popups

Exit Popups

Most people don’t like popups. They feel popups are spammy and deplete the user experience. However, times have changed and exit popups are no longer the annoying spammy ads. Today, if you move the cursor to the top right or left corner of your screen, with an intent to leave the page, the website senses that you are moving away from the page and displays a last-minute popup using Javascript. These popup ads are called exit-intent popups.

These might belong to the not-so-popular popup ad family but are the most powerful and effective digital marketing tool in today’s time. And, we are not glorifying exit popups for no reason. Studies show that you can recover more than 50 percent of your abandoning visitors by implementing an exit-intent popup. It helps in reducing cart abandonment, increasing downloads, getting email signups, and a lot more.

Considering the importance and effectiveness of exit popups, here’s a list of exit popup hacks to boost engagement, sales, and subscribers.

1. Offer A Discount

Who doesn’t like discounts? The moment you offer a discount to your visitors, the majority of them will stop and at least consider your offer. The discount can be offered in many ways. A lot of websites offer a discount coupon in return of email id, signing up for newsletters, or subscribing to their email campaigns. Others may choose to simply offer a discount code that users can use upon purchasing from the website. The bottom line is that users love discounts, and thus it’s a great way to retain them

2. Personalize Your Message

Personalization creates a powerful impact. Be it email campaigns, or generic messages. It always works. Capture the name of your visitors even before you attempt to make a sale and when they are about to abandon your web page, grab their attention by exit popups with their name on it. Personal messaging will create a positive impact and users will feel more connected to your website.

3. Offer Content Upgrade

Another great way of reducing abandoning customers is by offering them an upgraded version of the content that they were reading. A more in-depth version of a particular blog post. So for instance, if your blog post is a ‘how-to’ tutorial, your visitors may want to read it in full but may leave as the content is too long to be read in one go. As they go to close the browser, present them with a free download of a PDF version of the post. Most likely they will download it for later use and will subscribe to your newsletters as well.

4. Provide Them Options

The real problem with unsuccessful popups is that they don’t really offer what the users want. This happens because the business a lot of businesses have many different buyer personas and each one of them will respond differently to a particular offering. The solution to this problem is to offer them multiple choices and allowing them to choose the one that they want. Once they select an option, an opt-in form can be used to capture the lead.

5. Add Pictures To The Offer

Images create a greater impact and make a big difference to any online campaign. A good quality offer image along with other essential information will entice the users and will increase the chances of acceptance. 

6. Optimize The Exit Popups

The user is ready to leave the page and a delay of even one second in displaying the exit popups can be the game-changer. Therefore, it’s essential to optimize the popup message and design, so that it pops up instantly. Remove heavy images and graphics, don’t use special effects, and cut down on the content.

7. Overcome Objections

One of the major roadblocks to a purchase is also one of the best exit popup hacks, especially for eCommerce products and checkout pages. A lot of times the customer is on the verge of purchasing your product but is stopped by one small objection. 

One of the biggest objections that shoppers have is the Buyer’s Remorse. Do they get doubts in their mind like what if this is not the right product for me? What if I have to return it back? Offer money-back offers, 30-day free trials, and easy returns to the customers, in exit popups, so that they can purchase with confidence.

8. Provide A Simple Reminder

Sometimes just a reminder can make a difference. When customers are abandoning your website, they must be reminded of the products left in their carts. The reminder creates a strong and irresistible desire to close the purchase. Use solid copy to create more impact. Wait! are you sure you don’t want to buy. Wait, you still have some items in your cart. Don’t leave without your items. These are some examples that you can use.

9. Offer Free Shipping

It is a fun fact that shipping cost is one of the primary reasons for customers abandoning their shopping carts. Therefore, using free shipping exit popups is a great way to retain customers. Discount coupons or direct discounts on shipping along with the link to the product they wanted to buy. 

10. Create A Sense Of Urgency

The scarcity of something makes it more desirable. If customers are informed that there are only a few units of their favorite products are left, they won’t want to miss it. Hurry up!! Only two left in stock, or Hurry up! you get it at this price only today, is something that you can use in your exit popups copy.

Few tips to Reduce the Bounce Rate of your site. Read Here

The above-mentioned hacks will surely help you in retaining your customers and increasing conversions. If you want to know more about how to create exit popup campaigns, you can talk to our team now.

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Design UI Design Web Design

All You Need To Know About Website Header Designs

Website Header Designs

The landing page of your website is where the users first interact with you. It is your chance to create a solid first impression by creating impressive Website Header Designs. Undoubtedly, some areas of the webpage or mobile screen are particularly important and effective as compared to others; the header is one such area. 

In this article, we will discuss the functions of a header and different types of website header designs. 

What is a website header?

The header is the top part of the webpage. It is the area that users see for the first seconds of their introduction to the website before they scroll down or jump onto a particular section. The header should provide the core information about your business and offerings so that users could scan it in seconds. Headers are called “Site Menus” and are positioned as a key element of navigation in the website layout.

What can a website header design include?

Headers can include many layout elements  – 

  • Brand identity elements like logo, brand name, slogan, mascot, etc.
  • Search box
  • Core categories and sections of the website
  • Copy block around the theme of the product
  • Contact information
  • Language selector, in case of multi-lingual interface
  • links to the most important social networks

And many more.

That said, It’s not necessary to include all the above-mentioned elements in one web page header. You don’t want to stuff and overload your header with too much information. Too many elements and objects distract the user’s attention. Strategically pick the important elements, list them out, and choose the focused ones.

Why is the Website Header important?

There are several reasons why the header is a critical element of any website. Firstly, let’s consider the eye-scanning models which show how users interact with a webpage in the first few seconds of their interaction. When people visit the website, especially for the first time, they do not explore everything on the page. They scan it to look for attention-catching elements that convince them to spend some time on the website. 

The Nielsen Norman Group has researched extensively on determining the most common patterns in which users generally scan a webpage. Experiments on user eye-tracking showed that there are certain models along which visitors usually scan the website. Out of these, the most common patterns were the Z-Pattern, Zig-Zag pattern and F-Pattern. 

The similarity in all the three patterns is that users start the scanning process at the top horizontal area of the webpage. Displaying the core information and branding on the header helps readers quickly scan the key data. It also allows retaining users if the information is displayed properly.

Readability And Visual Hierarchy

The aspect of readability plays a huge role in the header. Therefore, a lot of thinking must go into deciding the typefaces for headers and the background color. The user must be able to scan and notice this basic information as fast as possible without any stress or distractions.

Also, remember that there are various ways for a header to transform while scrolling the page down. Some websites use a fixed header, which always stays and shows up at any point of interaction with the website; others hide the header during the process of scrolling. Some websites do not fully hide or fix the header but shrink it in size in the process of scrolling. All the secondary information is hidden and only the core elements of the layout are left active at all times.

Types of Website Headers

Hamburger Menu

Hamburger menus have gained a lot of popularity over the last few years. It is a great design solution that hides the basic links of data categories behind the hamburger button. The horizontal lines of the icon look like a typical hamburger, and that’s why the name.

This button is mostly placed in the header and is a typical element of user interaction. Today, most of the users are familiar with the Hamburger menu and expect the core categories of data under it. So, there’s no need for additional explanations and prompts. Hamburger menu leaves a lot of free space to place other important layout elements, and also provides a minimalistic design feel. This design technique benefits the responsive and adaptive design as it hides the navigation elements so that the interface looks the same on different devices.

Although hamburger menus are widely used as header elements, they are still a debatable issue of modern web and app design. A lot of design experts argue that a hamburger menu can be confusing for people who do not use websites regularly. So the decision of using a hamburger menu should be based on extensive research on users and target audience’s needs.

Fixed Header

Fixed headers is another header design trend that boosts usability if applied effectively. There are a lot of websites nowadays that use a fixed header. Take an example of Facebook. When you’ve logged into Facebook and scroll down you still see the header with the search bar and some other core functions at the top. 

The benefit of a fixed header is that if the user needs to use a function they can easily jump to the header without the need to scroll up, as would be required for a non-fixed header. However, if there is more content then users might lose some space because the header occupies some permanent screen real-estate. It enables to provide users with navigation area available at any point of interactions, which can be helpful in terms of content-heavy pages with long scrolling.

These tips might be helpful for you for designing headers

Double menu

The double menu in the header can present two layers of navigation. We have shown the example of such a trick in one of the recent case studies for a bakery website.

The bottom line is that the header is a vital zone of interaction for any website and needs careful design consideration. Each website header designs requires its own approach which fits for a specific target audience. User research is the key, based on which the decision can be made, whether to follow the traditional forms of header design or they need a new perspective. Want to know more? Ask our design experts.

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Web Design

Pro Tips For Web Designing With Type On An Image

pro-web-design

Designers across the globe have unanimously accepted the fact that pictures speak way louder than words. Today, images play a vital role in every web design and when paired with the right text, they create a magical effect. Text on and around images is a growing trend, however, it’s not the easiest of the concepts to pull off. You need the perfect image, hard-hitting message and a complimenting typography. Moreover, you must be clear about your intentions and what you really want to achieve with that type on the image. Here are a few tips that will help you to master the art of designing with type on an image.

Insert Text Into The Image

One of the best ways to perfectly play while designing type on pictures is to make the text a part of the image itself. This doesn’t necessarily works all the time but is very fruitful in some cases. You can either use a simple image and introduce the text into it or use an image with text already in it. But, make sure that the message conveyed is exactly the one that you wish to.

Mclarensource:Mclaren

Use Contrast

No matter how powerful your message or text is, it needs to be readable to be successful. Make sure that the text varies in color, just enough to be seen in combination with the photo. If you have a photo with a dark background, opt for white or light colored text or vice-versa. Contrast can also refer to the size of the text in relation to what is happening in the image. Lettering should work with (not against) the image.

Telegraphsource:Telegraph

Follow The Visual Flow

Working with the visual flow of an image is one of the most important tips when it comes to working with text and photos. The words must fit into logical parts of an image and there shouldn’t be any text over important parts of an image, such as the main action, faces or the showcased product. In terms of visual flow, look for spaces where the subjects of the image would look. The text placed in the visual line of image is likely to be more impactful.

Blurred Background Image

One of the simplest tools that you can use is the ability to blur a part of an image or the entire image at times. Adding a little blur to the background of an image with a software can help your text stand out and create a stunning visual impact. Blur can also add focus to your overall concept and can bring the actual product and text into sharper focus for website visitors.

Wallmobsource:Wallmob

Text In A Shape

When the images that you choose to use has lots of color or differences between light and dark sections, putting text inside a shape can really make it stand out. Select a color for the box which provides enough contrast for the lettering to show. You can also use a frame with some transparency to give it a softer feel, a show through kind of image.


Source: fall

Text In Background

Another handy and impactful trick out there is to put the text in the background of the image rather than the foreground. Typically, backgrounds are less busy and easier to work with when placing text. Most of the backgrounds are single colored, making the text stand out easily and increases its readability. The end result is a natural-looking placement that does not require a lot of tricks or alterations to the main image. Subtle shading effects can also be used to get the desired output.

squaresource: square

Use Huge Fonts

When you’re really confused with what to do, place the safest bet by using large size fonts. This applies to both the image or the type itself. The size element instantly grabs users’ attention and with one element being large, it’s easier to create scale with the text and image. Using big images can help with shading and contrast differences while using big text can add enough weight to lettering where it will appear readable against almost any image.

Cider
Source: Cider

In addition to these tips, always remember to use simple typography and a straightforward image for the best results. Discuss more on your web designing needs. Talk to our experts right away.

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Technology Web Design

Web Development Evolution Over the Years

web development

Change is the only constant. With other things, web development has also witnessed an evolution comprising many changes over the years. New ideas and technologies have raised the industry standard of web development to a whole new level. In this article, we will highlight how web development has changed over the years and what’s the contrast between yesterday and today.

Many Visually Appealing Fonts Available

Rollback the clock, or ask designers from yesteryears, they will go on and on talking about how standard the fonts were those days. You only had a handful font style, patterns to play around with. Every second website looked more or less similar. There weren’t any multi-font graphics that are available today. Today, you can not only find almost any font you think of, but can even create your own font.

User experience is critical and therefore a lot of emphasis is given on customization of elements, including the fonts. Fonts customization has become fairly easy, owing to the readily available tools (both paid and free). You may think what’s the need of so many fonts to convey the message through the website? Well, it’s not just about the text or what the text is trying to communicate; it’s more about the overall user experience and how well the fonts settle with other design elements of the website to enhance the experience, look, feel of the website.

Many Visually Appealing Fonts Available

GIFs Have Replaced PNG and EPS

Low page loading time is a vital element for any website’s success. In the past, designers and developers were very reluctant to use high-quality images as their large size hampered the page loading time. Therefore they used low-quality, stock images. However, the time has changed and users now expect HD images. Best WordPress page builders understand the importance of images and offer many options for integrating them into your site seamlessly.

PNG offers a wide range of images, but you may still notice a low pixel resolution of images, especially while viewing in different resolution. This is where EPS images have come in to minimize the distortion. Being based on vector imaging, they eliminate distortion or bad resolution. Moreover, they quickly upload, since they are compressed. The GIF is seeing a comeback, and they are no longer restricted to funny cat memes, they hold more visual importance now and is one of the most effective formats for animation.

GIFs Have Replaced PNG and EPS

Social Media is Everywhere

We don’t really need to push on how drastically social media has grown during the past ten years and is now a crucial part of our lives. Facebooking is now an action, messaging someone is a typical part of a conversation and our websites understand the language because we have to be social on our websites. Plenty of viral and news content floating throughout sites and social media is a normal occurrence. The number of people accessing news on Twitter or Facebook before one of the popular news shows is almost double.

It’s imperative for every business to have a solid social media strategy in order to survive in today’s world. Integrating social media into a website is a regular step in today’s web development process. Developers work hard to help users navigate their way over to “like” and “follow.” Developers nowadays don’t even ask “Do you need to integrate social media channels into your website?” It’s given, an unwritten rule given the current scenario.

Social Media is Everywhere

Development Simplified, Good Content Gained Importance

You no longer need to be a coding ninja to develop a website. HTML is not as necessary these days as it was a decade ago. If you want to build a website, you can use a drag and drop page builder and have a website up and running quickly. It looks great and most of the time functions in line with visitors expectations.

Meta tags are still here, but the importance is less than what it used to be a decade ago. Search engines will still pay attention to your metadata, but if you look at how important it was ten years ago and how important it is now, you will notice a major difference. That said, high-quality organic content is much more important in the search engines than any data you type in.

Good Content Gained Importance

As the times continue to change, we have to change and adapt to make sure that we are not left behind with a website from yesteryears. There is no reason to not set yourself up for success with a stunning website with great functionality and the ability to give its users an experience they will want to repeat. Talk to Our experts and know how you can do that?