Icons are used in website design, product promotion and for many different purposes. Icons are very small in size and you have to give attention to the minute details to make your designs successful. Even the most experienced graphic design artists make mistakes in icon design. Here are some of the deadliest mistakes you must avoid to design a meaningful icon.

1. Wrong Object Selection- You must use the right objects for your icon to help people understand what the icon stands for. For instance, Gmail uses the image of an envelop in their icon that clearly conveys the message to its viewers.
2. Not Making a Rough Sketch- Conceptualization is the most important step behind any design project. You should make a rough sketch of your design concept on a paper and use it as your guideline. Add or delete elements in your sketch, and once you are happy with your design, you can replicate using a design software.
3. Failure to Understand the Audience- Your icon design will be viewed by people all over the world and therefore, you must not hurt anyone’s cultural beliefs. Icons are often designed using symbols, but symbols have different meaning in different countries. For instance, a pentacle is considered as a holy symbol by the Jews, while Christians think of it as a symbol of Satan.
4. Not Creating the Icon in Bitmap Format- Some designers think that designing an icon in vector and raster format is enough. However, you need to design the icon in bitmap format as well. Vector formats don’t offer visual clarity when made smaller and therefore, you need to design a bitmap for better scaling facility.
5. Using Too Many Details- Icons are generally used in very small sizes and if you add too many details in your design, your icon will look complicated. Design a clutter-free icon to make it effective.
6. Adding Unnecessary Elements for the Sake of Aesthetics- Every designer wants to design an aesthetically appealing icon. However, that does not mean you can add unnecessary shapes and symbols in your icon. Meaningless symbols and lines only diminish the visual appeal of your icon. If you want to give your icon a distinctive look, you can use lighting and shadow effects.
7. Similar Design- When you design a bunch of icons for a group of products, you need to make sure that they reflect a coherent look, but don’t look too similar. If all your icons look the same, it will be hard for your target audience to understand which icon stands for which product. For instance, the icons of MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint offer a matching design, but you can easily distinguish them.
8. Failure to Maintain Design Consistency- When you are designing a set of icons for a group of products, like MS Office, make sure you maintain a design consistency in all your icons. For instance, if you use a particular light and shadow effect in one icon, you must use the same effect in other icons as well. Otherwise, it won’t look like they belong to the same group of products.
9. Using Bland Colors- Icons are very small in size and they need to attract the viewers’ attention. If you use monochromatic or dull colors in your icons, viewers won’t notice it. Always use bright colors and go for unique color combinations to make your icons noticeable.
10. Inappropriate Perspective for Small Icons- If your icon does not look good when compressed, your design is a complete failure. During the design process, you must continuously experiment with the size and perspective of your icon to make sure that it always looks brilliant from any angle.

Every designer makes mistakes, but when you are aware of the most common mistakes, at least you can try and avoid them.

Web design and content writing should complement each other. Web designers should create designs that are relevant to the content. Since website owners have only a few seconds to impress their visitors, the key to make a strong impression lies with creating designs that represent the purpose of the content, and content that is useful for the visitors.

Since a website is not similar to a graphic novel where every page has different pictures accompanied with text to tell the story, designers and content writers must keep in mind that consistency in the design and content matters.

Explained below are some plans of action that will help you boost the consistency of your web content writing and website design.

Back up your content with images to establish a sense of worth

Visitors should know about your products without scrolling over images. Give your visitors a tour of your product catalog where they will enjoy the combination of images and text and also feel an urge to proceed.

The key to creating a seamless image-text combination is improving the quality of the images. If the visual experience is not rich and professional and at par with the claims you make about your company, content alone can’t impress visitors.

Nobody likes boastful language. If your content makes sky-scraping claims about your products/services, no visitor would stay in your website for long. Support your claims with facts. Put your past records up. Let visitors browse through your portfolio and find out your area of expertise. It will justify your claims and convince visitors of your standards of service.

Compress

After eliminating the ‘big talk’ from your content, you will discover that it has become a lot more compact. Brief and compact content coupled with evocative design will help you garner desired results from your online identity. But only these two aren’t enough. If you want to capitalize on your content, you need to embrace a few more steps like prioritization, precise labeling and segmentation.

• Prioritization – It is about how you understand your target market and their activities and decide what you want your website to do. Create your website accordingly and get rid of any content that deviates from its objective. Present a comprehension for visitors to let them know why they are in your website. Don’t stress on how good you are in your field. Let the web design do that for you. Instead, tell your visitors you have what they need. If your web content clarifies that, visitors will automatically go further. Use appropriate headings, page titles and link text.

• Precise Labeling – Create the labeling in accordance with the visitors’ goals. Describe your product/service in a concise text. But let the design explain why you are better than others in the market. Cohering web content and design will allow visitors to have a sense of control.

• Segmentation – This is about dividing content into several sections according to the target market or objective. The content of the home page should briefly describe the different needs of different visitors and provide links to the specific pages. By doing this, you’ll be saving your visitors, time.

Create a Narrative Tone

For an engaging user-experience, narrative tones are very important. Web designers can create a narrative tone that will convince visitors. With intelligent content, you can experiment with different typographies and other elements that can be narrative. But you have to make sure your content and design are in keeping with each other and facilitates rich user experience.

Trust the Visitors

Rely on the visitors to establish a connection between your content and graphics. Remember, the higher sense of control you give your visitors, the closer you will get to them.  Enable the user to read and see what you have to offer at the same time.

These points will help you create and maintain consistency in your website content writing and design. They will also help reap the benefits of your online promotional campaign.

In recent times, guest posting has become a popular way to expose a company to a wider base of audience. Interesting guest posts can increase your site traffic and provide you with free publicity. An article published in San Francisco Chronicle also echoes this fact.

According to the article, website owners are now realizing the role that guest posts can play in enhancing advertising revenue and search engine rankings.  Naturally, everyone is now looking for guest authors who can contribute articles to their sites or blogs. In this article, we will discuss different benefits of guest posts in details.

Widen your Exposure with Guest Posts

One major benefit of publishing guest post is that it increases your visibility. As you start posting in various blogs, you would gain greater exposure. If you offer readers valuable information, chances are high that they will start visiting your site.

Apart from increasing your site traffic, guest posts can also help you to establish brand image of your company.

Acquire Backlinks

Writing good quality guest posts will help you to acquire backlinks. If people avail good information via your blogs, they will share your link with others. This, in turn, will enhance search engine rankings of your site. If you own a web development or web programming company, for example, increased rankings can bring in more clients.

Earn Money

Some sites organize contests for guest authors and pay a good amount of money to the winner. You may search for these sites, participate in the contests, and earn money. Even if you do not win the contest, you can always enjoy the exposure and appreciation that your article brings in.

Share Expertise

You can use guest posts to share your knowledge and expertise with readers. Of course, for this you have to write about familiar topics. You have to choose a topic that you have studied and acquired expertise.

Enhance Knowledge

Guest posts allow you to increase your current knowledge. Since thousands of people read guest posts,   you need to come up with topics that are interesting and well-researched. This will prompt you to gather more information about the topics, which in turn can increase your knowledge.

Market your Website

Guest post is another way of article marketing. It allows you to introduce yourself and your website before millions of visitors. This in turn, will encourage readers to visit your site.

Develop Professional Network

By publishing guest posts, you can come in touch with new people, including readers, bloggers, and website owners. This will allow you to create a strong professional network.

Increase your Confidence

If you publish good quality posts regularly, chances are high that people will offer you positive appreciation. This in turn, will enhance your confidence and encourage you to handle issues with greater gusto.

Publishing guest post creates a win-win situation for all the parties. Blog owners and authors can enjoy greater exposure. Readers, on the other hand, can acquire fresh information.

What do you think about this statement ? Do you agree with our opinion about guest posting? Did you try it? How was your experience? Share with us your views and opinions.

Many designers prefer to incorporate a brief introduction in the upper part of the website. According to them, this technique allows visitors to understand goals of the site.

Studies reveal that visitors spend only few seconds to decide whether they are at the correct place or not. If you include a short introductory text in your website design, it will allow people to know about the purposes of the site and create a positive impression.

In this article, we will discuss issues related to the introductory text. To know how you can use this introductory text to increase your site traffic, read on.

Figure Out Goals of the Introductory Text

The first step is to note down goals of the introductory text. This, of course, varies from one site to the other. Still, we have pointed out few common goals.

1. To highlight themes/purposes of the site.
2. To inform visitors about the acts they should perform
3. To point out benefits of using the site.

Use the Text to Develop Unique Personality of Your Company

Creating a unique  personality of your company is critical. This will help you to establish a strong brand image of your company. You can modify the introductory text for creating a powerful personality of your company. For example, if you develop exclusive logo designs or believe in staying in touch with clients regularly, highlight this fact in the introductory text.

Opt for a Brief Text

To retain interest of visitors, keep the introductory text short and simple. Do not incorporate more than 3 lines in the introductory text. In fact, if you want, you may use phrases or even words as your introductory text. However, you need to ensure that visitors can easily understand these phrases or words.

Take Help of a Direct Approach

Consider the fact that website visitors have limited time. If you do not inform them about purposes of your site quickly, chances are high that they will lose their interest and move on. Therefore, to grab attention of the target audience, opt for a direct approach.

Placing It Correctly is Critical

Placing the introductory text at a prominent area will encourage visitors to check it out. These prominent areas can include top left and top center. Incorporating the text at these places will automatically garner attention of the target audience.

Highlight the Introductory Text

Various ways of highlighting the text exist. We discuss these strategies in details.

• Size- Grab attention of visitors by making size of the text bigger. Gestalt principle of Similarity

states that if a thing possesses a bigger size, as compared to its surrounding elements, it will definitely stand out.

• Contrast- Contrast the text against the website background. It will grab attention.
• Use a Brief Heading- You can use incorporate a brief sentence as heading of the text. Make size of the heading bigger to stimulate interest of users.

Consider these strategies to develop an interesting  introductory text.