If you are thinking about hiring a website design agency to work on your blog, virtual store or what not, one of the most important things you should discuss with them is what they would do to make your web design responsive.
Responsive Web Designing – What Is It?

The design or layout of your website may be referred to as ‘responsive’ if it literally responds to the needs of your user. No matter what kind of activity you are engaged with online, you will always only have two types of users:

• Mobile users include those who use smartphones, tablets, mobile phones, and other kinds of mobile devices to access your website.

• Desktop users include those who use laptops and PCs to go online.

A responsive website is designed in such a way that the needs of both users are immediately addressed.

Navigation-friendly
Mobile devices would always have smaller screens, and as such you need to make sure that your website is quick and easy to navigate. Scrolling should be done either horizontally or vertically but never both! As for links, you might want to think about increasing the use of buttons rather than plain text links. If a link is too small for people to click easily with their thumbs, they might prefer to find something else – outside your website – to click instead!

A Perfect Fit
Every page of your website must perfectly fit the screen no matter what kind of mobile device or browser your visitor is using. When adapting a mobile design for your site, you may need to tinker a bit with the size of your layout. Some columns would have to be longer rather than wider while photos would have to be smaller. All of these changes must be completed by the time your homepage loads on the screen.

Strategic Photo Selection
More often than not people have to rely on slightly slower connection speeds when they go online using a mobile device. As such, it would take more time than usual for pages to load on their screens. You need to be very careful with the images you choose to upload to your site since photos and other types of graphics can significantly lengthen the loading time.  Images must also be effectively resized to fit mobile designs without making it any less clear.

Mobile Services
Mobile users rarely visit a particular website without a specific reason. With that in mind, you need to dig deep and find out what those reasons could be and make sure that your website’s services would answer your user’s needs. It’s totally fine not to offer all the services and features that your desktop website offers. Focusing on the services that mobile users most need ensures that they waste as little time as possible browsing your site.

Interactive
Finally, remember that mobile users are likely to be very active on the social front. As such, your mobile website must be designed with a high degree of interaction in mind. Social media must be fully integrated in a way that would not require users to leave your site if they find something worth tweeting or sharing on Facebook.

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

What do great food and most-viewed websites have in common? The answer is this: a recipe. Although there’s an occasional eureka moment when it comes to chefs and their creations (with delicious food items created out of mistakes or missteps), the majority of the time, delicious food are recreated again and again thanks to a secret recipe that’s sure to wow the crowds. These secret recipes are usually hidden from view and aren’t even shared with assistant cooks. But remember that in the wonderful world of the Internet, all good things must be shared lest they come to an end. Read on for our take on the best recipe for a top-notch website.

Personalization
A huge cup of personalization is a great way to encourage more traffic. Due to the fact that there is no physical contact when it comes to online transactions, a more personalized approach does make up for the lack of actual interaction.

Honest to goodness content
You’ve all heard that content is king but the question is, what kind of content? In the information age, the only way you’re going to get traffic to your website is if you have concise, creative, and up-to-date information. Whether it’s in paragraph form or compressed into an infographic, remember that content is what will help deliver traffic to your site.

But do remember that a huge serving size of quality content is not the only ingredient that’s needed for a great website but it does add considerable value. Think of it as the eggs in a great cake recipe. Although there are readily available egg substitutes, eggs add oomph and do an all around wonderful job for any cake recipe in terms of moisture, fat, emulsification, and added nutritional value.

Presentation and overall customer experience
Proper plating is the equivalent of excellent web design. How the food is arranged can help enhance the overall experience. However, Skeuomorphism is no longer the name of the game. Recently, Apple made its distaste for skeuomorphs public. Simply put, if it’s just there for the aesthetic appeal, ditch it. If it’s not going to add to the overall taste, it’s not going to work. Design elements that are both creative and useful are more favorable as these will stand the test of time even though these are harder to create at the beginning.

A few notes
If you want to create your own recipe, take note that trial and error is key. Innovation doesn’t – and shouldn’t – come overnight. Especially when you’re working with a web design agency, it’s crucial that a recipe/approach should be refined continuously. And when you witness a great turnout, show everyone the results to encourage further improvement and development.

Lastly, a great website is like a 5 star restaurant. When a client complains and wants to talk to the chef, make sure the chef has a smile on his or her face and dishes out a “special” from the menu if ever there’s a complaint. Regardless of age, sex, or location, people expect excellent customer service. Excellent customer service is

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

We all know that the World Wide Web (WWW) has made a huge impact to our society and to our everyday lives. Not only did it make a huge impact with the fast growth of social media networks but also to entrepreneurs all over the world.  With just one click, you can easily transfer your payments and orders from one person to another – despite the distance and location.

Now with this outstanding technology, the question you need to ask is how do you attract your consumers and possible customers using your website?

Web Design
Just like the quote “It is beauty that catches the eye but it is personality that catches the heart.” It’s the same with your website. It’s a must for it to be attractive, decent and presentable all at the same time.

Addition to this, it should also be full of interesting information about the products or services that you’re trying to market. For example, you’re trying to market a car. The design should be something connected to cars and it should also feature a model of the car. You can also put moving graphics or short clips that will surely attract your viewer’s attention.

Know Your Target Audience
Getting to know your target audience is one of the most important things that can help you improve your website.

For example, if you’re planning to market a website that contains children’s books and online games, it’s already a known fact that your target audience are youngsters. This information would tell you that your website should be user-friendly and should be as simple as possible yet attractive at the same time. Try conducting a survey to know what group of individuals you’re attracting.

Promote And Advertise
There are plenty of ways to promote your website. Now that it is up and running, you would want people to know about it. So let them! You could always advertise them using social medias like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest. Post them anywhere you can, the more the better.

Annotated Links
Creating links for your target market can also be a big help for them because it gives them an idea about the other topics that they’ll encounter on your website. In this way, they wouldn’t need to open another tab just to search about these topics. It will also be convenient for them since it would save them a lot of time by just simply clicking the hyperlinks found on your website.

Update
One of the things that you shouldn’t do is to forget updating your website. If you want loyal viewers and readers, you have to commit to them on a daily basis. Keep in mind that they are the main reason that you’re website is up and running. You have to reach out to them by giving them good service and updated information.

You wouldn’t want to see your website being abandoned, right? Once they see that your website is abandoned, your viewers and readers would immediately leave and it’s something you wouldn’t want to happen.

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

Website owners were still reeling from the devastating effects of Google Panda when the search engine giant came out with yet another update. It’s been one year since then, and if you haven’t yet reworked your website design to follow the dos and don’ts listed by Google Penguin, now is a good time to do so. With rumors abounding about an upcoming massive update to Google Penguin, you need to make sure your website is in a very good position to avoid being caught by Google’s typical first-round witch hunt of violators.

Google itself came up with a precise list of violations that your website can never be forgiven for.

• Use of hidden links or texts

• Use of sneaky (read: involuntary) redirection or cloaking

• Sending Google automated queries

• Use of irrelevant keywords

• Filling domains, sub-domains, and multiple pages with duplicate content

• Performing any malicious action on your website (e.g. virus installation, phishing)

• Use of doorway pages

• Creating affiliated pages that have low or zero-value content

Google also came up with a list of guidelines to help website owners better distinguish between whitehat and blackhat SEO techniques.

Prioritize readers over search engines.

Google Penguin is all about content that makes the readers happy. If you please your user, then you’ll eventually achieve pleasing search engine ranking results.

Avoid any strategies that are specifically designed to improve your page or SE ranking.

To paraphrase Google, if you were asked to explain your strategies to your competitor, would you come across as being effective and fair-minded with your approach? Or would it appear like you were cheating your way to first-page ranking instead?

If the strategy is something you would never even have considered implementing if there are no search engine rankings to worry over, then it is a strategy that you shouldn’t bother implementing.

Avoid getting associated with bad neighborhoods.

Yes, that really is the term Google used. Bad neighborhoods are also known as spam sites and link farms. They’re websites that perform blackhat SEO techniques to improve rankings. Even if you’re not guilty of them yourself, linking to bad neighborhoods make you guilty by association as far as Google is concerned.

An excellent way to determine whether a site is bad neighborhood material is by typing site: (insert URL here) in the query box of Google. If no results come up, then it’s definitely a site you don’t want to be associated with.

Avoid using programs unauthorized by Google.

This is basically an extension of the “thou shall not send Google automated queries” commandment. Such programs typically use methods frowned upon by Google for checking rankings and submitting pages. It may take some time for Google to catch you on this, but your website will get flagged for it sooner or later.

If you are working with a website design agency that willfully disregards all the rules stated above, then it might just be time for a change – unless you want to risk getting blacklisted by Google.

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

When it comes to promoting your own website or your company’s website, your marketing strategy isn’t the only important thing that you should focus on. You should also consider the overall web design of your website. For example, your marketing strategy is amazing but your website isn’t as impressive as your marketing strategy, it won’t be healthy for your company’s image. It also doesn’t make any difference if it’s the other way around. Either of this is not good because it would disappoint your readers and probably your possible clients too.

It’s best for you to focus on your website first before promoting it. And when you’re already in the stage of promoting your page, Facebook is one of the best social media that you could use. Especially, Facebook had a lot of new updates recently when it comes to promoting your Facebook page.

Facebook added 3 new choices when it comes to promoting your page and these are Get More Page Likes, Promote Page Posts and See Advanced Options. In each of which have different focus and function.

Get More Page Likes
For this choice, basing from its name, your ad would be focused on getting more likes for your page. In this, you’re also the one who’ll be writing the content of your own ad. Yes, you could personally write whatever you want to put in your ad.

There are some instances when your company’s name or Facebook page’s name is too long. In this kind of situation, the first 25 characters would be the only ones that would be shown in your ad so it would be better if you could make it shorter and simpler as you can.

Promote Page Posts
For people who are already familiar with using Facebook promotion ads, they would know that this option was under “Sponsored Story” in the past. With this choice, your ad would be focused on promoting a post from your page. It could be an old post or a new post.

The good thing about this is that the ad is already prewritten for you. You could find this kind of ad in both your News Feed and at the right corner of your Facebook. Another good thing with this choice of ad is that whenever it shows up in a user’s News Feed, they could easily interact with you in your ad without needing to go to your page. Users who didn’t like your page could also see the ad so it is possible that they would go and like your page.

See Advanced Options
Basing from the name itself, this choice lets you personalize your ad more. However, in this option, you would still need to decide if you want to get more likes or you want to promote a post from your page.

One of the reasons why a lot of users prefer using this option is that they could choose a landing page for the ad. For example, when a user clicked the “see more information” link in your ad, instead of landing to your page, you could direct them to a specific tab in your page.

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

Color influences behavior – consumer behavior, that is. Have you ever wondered how some retail outlets encourage you to stay for hours on end while some discourage you from stepping inside to begin with? How about with websites? Ever wondered how some websites appeal to you more as opposed to other similarly designed sites? To some extent, color may be to blame. Sometimes overlooked in the design process, some websites don’t maximize their brand’s potential by coming up with other color combinations. After all, it’s very easy to stick with the company colors or the colors that are used in the logo/brand. Scroll down for tips on using color to your website’s advantage.

An Easy Makeover
Lots of women out there know that changing a lipstick shade is one of the cheapest ways to get a makeover. The same goes with websites. Updating the color scheme of your site is one of the easiest ways to keep your look up-to-date. Knowing the psychology behind the basic colors is a great way to start. Yellow, orange, and red are all vibrant colors that are stimulating for users. Sites like Amazon use yellow in their “add to cart” buttons. Yellow also means happiness and this could make users feel happier with their purchase. Green and brown are great down-to-earth colors that can be used for eco-friendly or home & living centered websites. Punches of pink and peach are great ways to add vibrancy, not just for fashion or beauty websites.

2013-2014 Color Trends
For 2013, “vintage colors” are in. Think pale pinks and faded teal. If you have trouble creating color combinations, you can always Google posters and artworks from the 1950s or whatever your decade of choice may be. Splashes of neon are also welcome this year. Trend forecasters in the fashion industry are in agreement that this 80s color trend is here to stay. Neon is especially striking for minimalist websites that use plain fonts and background. Neon is particularly tricky to use because it can annoy some users. However, when used sparsely, it can highlight items easily – and in a stylish way too. For next year, take cues from Mother Nature. Color combinations that conjure images of a safari sunset are going to be popular. Punches of orange, pink, gold, brown, and green (or gray or blue) are a great combination. Last year, it was all about a particular shade of green – mint. Next year, orange, melon, and tangerine will be popular.

Colorblind-Friendly
This is the tricky part. What if you’re designing web pages that should look user-friendly for colorblind people and the rest of the population? Although some people might think that a gray scale website is the solution, this is not the case. As long as you label important functions instead of relying on color alone (i.e. using the color red to indicate an error and putting the word ‘error’ as well), colorblind people will not be turned off by your website. There are various websites that simulate a color blind person’s view of your website so you can check your if your site is readable or not.

Color Unpredictability
For the most part, different cultures associate color with different things. Green could mean money or prosperity for one person while for another it could be associated with envy or jealousy. Fast food restaurants use red and yellow color combinations because it makes food more appealing. Although this is usually true, this is merely scratching the surface of color theory and its real world application. This is why it’s always great to experiment with color. The good news is 2014’s biggest color trend would have to be unpredictable color combinations that surprisingly work well.

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

We’ve all heard the adage that image is everything. This is especially true when it comes to the Internet. However, the image that we’re talking about is free images. To throw in another saying: a picture’s worth a thousand words. And sometimes, a picture feels as if it is worth a thousand bucks. So we’ve compiled a handy list of free sources of images around the World Wide Web.

How Important Is A Picture?
If you want to sell or to just plain get noticed, you need a picture to support your words. Even the best web content or article needs an image or two to put the message across. Not to mention that a good quality photo can be a rich source of information and can replace the text completely. This is why we’ve got a lot of artists creating infographics as this combines the qualities of good content and imagery in one nifty package.

What Kind of Photos Do We Actually Need?
This is a tricky question to answer as it depends on a website’s purpose. You can use images to inject humor, satire, or even drama. However, if you lean towards e-commerce and have a variety of products that need to be showcased, do not take notes from big boss, Amazon. According to a study by Jakob Nielsen, Amazon’s generic photos were completely ignored by users who were looking to buy a TV. The Pottery Barn, on the other hand, invested on a good photographer who took detailed photos of TV sets and other similar items in their natural setting – a living room, no less! The latter proved to be more effective as compared to big shot Amazon’s tactic. A lot of artists simply use the software of their choice to create an image or collage using different free images from around the Internet.

With that in mind, here are our top picks of excellent sources of free images.

1. Wikimedia Commons
A lot of web designers and artists return to Wikimedia Commons again and again for free sources of images. If you want renaissance art, they’ve got it. If you want a picture of a French macaron, they also have it. If you want something more specific, like a row of mailboxes, they also have it. If you know the tricks of the trade, you can easily create an excellent-quality and professional looking image from different images found here. They’ve also got non-stock images of people in their natural setting, which can help sell a product as compared to stock images of models that look as unnatural as good old mannequins on a display window.

2. Stock.XCHNG
A major downside for a lot of folks: the dreaded registration process. If you want to download images, you need an account. Also, if you want to use the images to sell your wares, you may or may not need to inform the photographer. Aside from those things, this website is an excellent source of natural images that when used properly can actually enhance your website’s content.

3. morgueFile  
For most artists, this is one of their first stops when looking for royalty-free images. You can literally go nuts and go on a downloading spree. Some photographers, however, want you, the downloader, to drop by and leave them a note if you want to use their images to sell a product. However, this is a rare instance and morgueFile is truly one of the best sources of free images in the World Wide Web.

4. Flickr: The Commons
People rarely look to Flickr for free photos. Like Wikimedia Commons, this is a great website to browse for hours on end. You will stumble upon rare gems and high-quality photos that can be used by the lowly (and stingy) common folk. There are a few restrictions, of course. Sometimes, you have to read the fine print to determine the extent of free usage. Aside from that, there is no reason not to go loco for all the free images contained herein.

5. DeviantArt
If you know how to look, you can get free photos created by up-and-coming artists. This is a bit down on the list because of the tediousness involved but when you’re lucky, you’ll hit gold and get the free image jackpot.

6. Google Art Project
This one’s for the art geeks. You can get access to all kinds of art images that you can tweak to your heart’s delight.

7.   NASA
On a weird twist, NASA is actually a great place to look for all images related to space. If you need a webpage background or a great texture for your images, look no further than NASA.

8. The National Archives
For history buffs, the USA government can give you your dose of free, historical images. Although last on this list, if you need a specific image that’s history-related, this one’s a great place to start.

Watch Out
A lot of web designers are tempted to use pointless images just for the sake of having an image that they can assign random keywords to. Not only will this backfire, this will also have negative implications in the long run. From the same study by Jakob Nielsen that was referenced earlier, it was revealed that web users are not complete idiots and can identify or disregard stock photos of “generic-looking” people and photos that were placed mainly for decorative purposes. So it’s safe to say that at the end of the day, if the photo is not going to aid in anyway, ditch it!

 

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

Having little knowledge when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably not a surprise anymore.

We are now living in the modern age and using the Internet is now part of every individual’s daily lives. If you’ll ask any teenager if they could survive a day without an Internet connection, they would probably have the same answer. Majority of them would answer no. You might think that the teenagers are the only ones who can’t live without the Internet. The truth is, there are also people who’re already past their teenage years who couldn’t survive a day without an Internet connection. Most of them are the ones who’re earning through the Internet and SEO is just one of the best moneymaking you can do online.

If you or your company didn’t hire a web design agency to work on the SEO of your website, you could always try to learn how to do it yourself. If you try searching about it, there’s hundreds and thousands of results that you could get. For people who’re quite familiar with SEO, it might be easy for them to learn more things about it but for those who’re not familiar with it, they might have a hard time understanding it. However, this doesn’t mean that you could never learn how to do it.

When it comes to SEO, you don’t only need to know how to do it but you also need to know what are the things that it could do for you. Everything in this world has its pros and cons. No matter what it is, there would always be at least one pro and one con. With SEO, here are the 3 things that it can do for you, your company and your website.

• SEO can help you earn money. With the help of the keywords you’re using for your website, it brings you more people that could be a possible buyer of the services or products that your company is offering. Some of the people who visits your website may not be a possible buyer but they could be a way for you to get more people to know about your company. For example, if one of your visitor happens to have a friend who’s in need of your service or products, he could recommend their friend to check your website.

• SEO rankings can either harm or help your company. Not all SEO rankings are good for your company. High SEO ranking is definitely a good thing for your company but in order for you to get a ranking, it will take you a lot of time and hard work. As for low ranking, it will not have a good effect on your company and there’s a possibility that it could ruin the great image that your company has.

• Natural SEO. This is what Google wants and in order to achieve this, you need to make sure that the quality of your content is something that would attract your target audience. Don’t write content that isn’t connected to your website or your company as it will disappoint your audience and could result to lesser audience in the future.

 

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

Web design agency is now probably one of the most essential agencies in the aspect of online marketing. Whether your company is offering services or selling goods, it is something that you would be happy to have. The responsibilities of this agency aren’t as easy as you think it is. Not because it has the words web design on its name doesn’t necessarily means that they would only work on web design. From SEO, web design, content, HTML to making sure the website maximize it’s capability are all part of their job.

• SEO. SEO means Search Engine Optimization. To those who’re not familiar with SEO, it is the process where you increases the visibility and ranking of a specific website in search engine search results. The aim of this is for your website to be easily seen by people who search anything related to your website. If you remember, whenever you search about something on Google, you will always click the first link that you’ll see and that’s what SEO is for. The higher ranking your website gets the better.

• Web design. Web design doesn’t only focus on the design itself. The web designer needs to make sure that the fonts and the colors he used would go well with the overall design he made for the website. There are times where a website has an amazing design but the readers and visitors of the website can’t read the contents simply because the font is too hard to read or the font color doesn’t go well with the background color. In creating a web design, it would be good if you’ll consider that simplicity is the best. It requires a very creative mind to create an impressive yet simple web design.

• Content. What’s the use of a website without its content? When it comes to web content, it is very important for you to make sure that the contents are informative and interesting at the same time. And by interesting, you need to make sure that your readers wouldn’t get bored reading it.

• HTML. HTML means HyperText Markup Language. Without these codes, there’s no way that you could establish a website. This work needs to be done by someone who’s trained in the filled because once you make a very small mistake such as forgetting to put angle brackets “<” “>”, the whole web page won’t work. Until you find that mistake, the web page won’t work at all. That’s why in doing this kind of work you need to be very keen to every details.

All of these are essential to every website and it would be a great thing for your company website to be one of the top results in search engine search results. One thing to keep in mind when it comes to developing your website, make sure that you won’t be bored with your own website. If you – the owner of the website – is already bored with it, how much more the people who doesn’t even know a thing about your company? Don’t aim for good but aim for great.

 

Posted from Glendale, California, United States.

Being cool is always hot. But what exactly makes something cool? You could say that cool is about attractiveness, but what’s it got to do with you, you may ask? It’s simple, really. Knowing the latest trends and making use of them for your Internet marketing campaigns is great and all, but that shouldn’t be the end of it. If you have an idea as to what’s going to be big in the future, you could easily be ahead of the curve.

This means that you as an Internet marketer can create detailed campaigns for your target audience before everybody else does. You can create web pages that are ‘cool’ and very easy to sell. While your competitors are clamoring to create sites that should adapt to the times, you’re just sitting there, relaxing, and enjoying the fruits of your labor. If that sounds good to you, read on for our top tips on how to be an Internet Cool Hunter.

1. Look for Places Where the Young’uns Gather    
This sounds like creepy advice, but let’s face it, what the young ones want, they get. Cool hunting is really about scouring the Internet, which is quick to adapt to the ever-changing demands of its users. This generation is all about self-expression and uniqueness, hence, the rise of blogging platforms, YouTube, Twitter, and the currently popular Pinterest. Another one, Tumblr, a microblogging platform, is where people ‘reblog’ texts, videos, and images that they deem to be cool. A few years ago, it was all about Friendster, a social networking site that brought people together despite great distances. It’s where you got to post photos and testimonials about your friend. Now it’s all about Facebook and Google+. Remember that it’s easy to sell where there are a lot of people gathering. And not to mention that the buying tendencies of the majority can be easily determined thanks to Facebook likes and Google+ ‘likes’.

Now let’s take a look at the hipster, which nowadays could translate to an annoying know-it-all, who is also arguably hot and trendy. The original hipster a few years back loved vintage finds, indie music, and products that are quirky or one-of-a-kind. The hipster loved anything that wasn’t mainstream or popular. Now, being hipster boils down to a specific set of clothes like wayfarers and 50s hairstyles. A cool hunter probably saw how the hipster is considered as a ‘trendsetter’ in some Internet blogging circles and decided to make it mainstream. Nowadays, no one would bat an eye at a young girl dressed in what appears to be a rockabilly outfit complete with winged eyeliner and a coiffed hairstyle. What we’re getting at is that a cool hunter can try to detect emerging trends that can be pushed to the limelight and be ultimately deemed ‘cool’ by the public.

2. Know Your Classics
Not everyone can relate to either sadness or happiness at any given time. But even the happiest or saddest person knows a thing or two about nostalgia. This is the reason why knowing the classics is going to be an important step to becoming an Internet cool hunter. The classics are going to sell time and time again. It evokes a sense of nostalgia. Not to mention that a lot of today’s trends are simply a re-work of the classics. Just remember the 40-year rule. Do you see how a lot of music nowadays sounds like the ones during the 70s? Or how a lot of fashions appear to be a mishmash of other trends and the 70s? These songs and clothing items are all deemed to be classics, things that will never go out of style, hence, very easy to sell.

 

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