When it comes to mobile website design or search engine optimization for mobile websites, the rules are not entirely different from those of desktop websites but there are definitely some subtle differences that come into play when you select the colors for a mobile website.

A clever idea is to re-use the color scheme of your desktop site for your mobile website. It would maintain a uniformity of color in both the versions of your website. Some colors can be a bit difficult for mobile devices to display, steer clear from any such color.

The color selection for mobile websites can also be done by modifying the color scheme of your website’s desktop version. But you must bear in mind the technical constraints of smartphones, tablet computers and netbooks. Though mobile devices are quickly advancing, technical constraints still hinder the process of quality web design for them.

Depth of the Color – This is one of the principal things to consider when you are designing a mobile website. As stated above, despite the advancing technology, mobile devices are still lagging behind PCs and laptops to a great extent. Even the costliest and highest quality mobile devices in the market have a comparatively low depth of color which means they can display 65000+ shades of colors like blue, red and green. But that will not fulfill your design requirement.

Less colors mean more user-friendliness – Yes. Use only a few colors and it is advisable that you refrain from using any other color than your main colors. Since the screen of mobile devices are small, a website does not have the liberty to use various different colors.

Brightness and Contrast – These two play an important role in creating a website for mobile devices. You have to take into consideration the fact that users do use their mobile devices to surf the net in bright daylight. You cannot compel them to visit your site only in the night. Plus, many users want to conserve the energy of their mobile devices by keeping the contrast and brightness low. To cater to such users, you have to use very high contrasts of colors.

Watch out when you use gradients – as they can become an obstacle in the way of viewing your mobile website. Gradients only go well with desktop websites. Mobile internet users can see gradients even when there aren’t any. It’s not that you cannot use gradients at all. Just use as little of them as possible.

Backgrounds – Background images can be tricky for mobile websites. There has been many instances where the same background has displayed perfectly on a PC or laptop but when used on a mobile site, it has made reading the content impossible.

Colors cannot deliver information – While they can do a lot, colors cannot be informative. So do not depend on them to do that.

Now, let’s get started – After ensuring all of the above are in the right places and in the right shape, it’s time for you to start your mobile web design project. So, hire a web designer and get things going. If you want to do your own homework, try to get your hands on a color scheme generating tool. You may not get ground-breaking ideas from it, but it’ll be worthwhile.

Best of luck!

Content needs to be SEO-friendly. At the same time, it needs to adhere to a certain word limit. For the designing team, here’s how to maintain both:

• Use tabs to keep the page ‘tight’ and make information easily available to visitors. You can actually hide chunks of content using tabs. Visitors will read the entire content, in various tabs  and here will be no room for boredom.
• SEO content should be ‘below the fold’. Keep in mind that a site’s traffic flow increases when visitors see attractive design, not when they find a chunk of text. There’s also a possibility of a conflict between SEO and content team here because according to SEO strategies, ‘above the fold’ is the place where optimized content should appear.
• The pages where SEO is not that important, such as the ‘about’ page, should be adorned with appealing designs. So, if you are a designer, let your creativity loose on these pages.

Navigation

Be clear when it comes to site navigation. Keep your website navigation buttons as clear as possible. You do not want to mislead your visitors. This does not mean you have to curb your creative desire. You can design the labels as you wish, but in order to offer a better user-experience, you need to position the text and the labels as clearly as you can.

Home Page Header Design

Animations and rotating images in the header are an effective way to present the good things about your company along with your value proposition. While content must be informative, the header must connect with the visitors emotionally in order to be effective. There are several ways to establish a connection between a website and its visitors. Try telling a story with the website design, logo design and content writing rather than talking about the products/services that your company offers.

Call-to-action

Needless to say, call-to-action is what takes visitors to the next level after they have browsed a website fully. Call-to-action can be simple as well as elaborated. But similar to the landing page, the call-to-action text should be simple, short and most importantly, clear. It also needs to be relevant to where it leads the visitors. Interesting content alone can’t help. You need attractive design in the call-to-action and the design should be done is such a way that it can be read with ease.

There are a few more things to be taken care of regarding the call-to-action. These things can arouse conflict between content writing and web design again. Below you will find how to resolve the conflict.

• Communicate with all the team members of content and design team clearly.
• Communicate with the client clearly.
• Choose a project manager who has excellent communication skills.
• Do not deviate from the purpose of the design.

Now, let me tell you that there are writers who cannot shorten information and designers who cannot but create elaborate designs. Trust me, they are quite common and both of them do not contribute anything to a site’s effectiveness.

These conflicting tendencies of content writing services and web design make the actual work very challenging. A good way to sort things out here is to have a discussion as a whole team. Another, quite effective way, though not followed very frequently, is to request feedback from clients. Just show your web page to people and take their opinions. This will give you an idea as to how successful your website is going to be.

Bear in mind that everyone is subjective about their own creations because there’s an emotional bond between a creator and his creation that overshadows any flaws that might be in the creation.

There is a prevalent misconception that Flash-based websites are not ranked well in SERPs or Search Engine Results Pages. But in reality, there are a number of instances of Flash sites being ranked at prominent positions by search engines.

Even a decade ago, Flash design meant a disaster for search engine ranking but now, with Google’s Flash update in 2008, success is possible with Flash website design.

Do not ignore the fact that all the major search engines are taking every possible step to index Flash-based websites. You can actually help these search engines by -

• Promoting your brand and creating useful links to the pages that are the most important on your website.
• Getting your meta tags right. Remember, meta descriptions, if written with relevant and powerful call-to-action, can turn random net searchers into your site visitors. Be sure to optimize the titles of your web pages with the right keywords but do not overdo it as that would be spamming.
• Code your website with as much plain HTML as possible and link from the plain HTML portion of your web page. Select your anchor text cleverly.

No matter whether you are getting your website designed by a website design company India, or by a design company from any other country, bear in mind that a website isn’t all about looks. So, Flash design alone cannot make a website successful, neither can optimization, if done alone. Your site needs to be popular and relevant in order to be successful. So, concentrate on building a powerful link profile.

Of course, Flash adds a lot of beauty to a website, but when designing a Flash website, you shouldn’t depend on beauty completely. Bring some effective SEO practices on board and adhere to the optimization guidelines set by Google. That way, even if your site is Flash-based from head to toe, it will be indexed by Google and show up in search results.

Below are some things to maintain if you want to earn success with your Flash site.

• Navigation should not be hampered by Flash – The better the navigation, the easier it is for visitors to explore your website. The Flash design on your website should not affect the way visitors roam around in your site. Let them move freely and don’t confuse them with intricate Flash designs.
• Be focused on your message – Do not get lost in beautiful and intricate Flash animation as it might overshadow your message so much so that visitors will not even know there was a message. To grab visitors’ attention, you need eye-catching Flash website design and also the room to convey your message.
• Include SEO aspects into your Flash site – Making your Flash website SEO friendly will boost your conversion rate and also increase your site’s visibility on search engines.

Remember, success won’t come overnight. It calls for effort as well as implementation of smart tactics. A successful Flash website should offer more than just attractive designs.

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.

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.

For small-scale website design companies, acquiring good clients is a primary goal. Unfortunately, this is not an easy task. You have to encourage clients to trust your company, fulfill your promise, and finally, nurture the relationships regularly.

In this article, we will discuss few strategies that will allow small companies to acquire and retain valuable clients. We will focus on three basic issues-action, research and finally, delivery.

Action – Main purpose of this step is to earn trust of clients and engage them

Creating a unique personality represents the most important step of acquiring a client. For example, if you are passionate about offering people logo design or website design solutions, market it. Clients may not immediately sense your passion, but over time, it will provide you with rich benefits.

Of course, sometimes, honesty and passion are not enough. If you want to develop a warm relationship with a client, highlight the different ways you can solve his/her problem. Convince the client that you need to work together to deal with the issues.

Research – Main purpose of this step is to earn identify the issues that the client is facing. Tools can include research studies and customer journey maps.

Social science Research- The best way to gain an insight into users’ psyche is by conducting research. Research methodologies can be of various types. These can include focus groups (qualitative research where people are asked about their opinions about a product), ethnography (field research conducted in the respondents’ environment), and prototyping (identifying problems of a new product/design and solving them, before launching it).

Some of the research methodologies stated above are expensive and may demand investment of money. However, consider the fact that as compared to conducting research studies, launching a product and solving issues involve greater investment of time and money. In case the client cannot support extensive research studies, you can opt for inexpensive methods (interviewing people at a coffee shop, for example).

Customer Journey Map- This strategy will help you to understand emotional journey of users. Let us assume that your client has an ecommerce site. While the users are shopping, you can ask them about their experiences. They may be quite comfortable with the shopping experience or frustrated. Recording these opinions and studying them can help your client to understand the weak points about his/her site.

Delivery – Main purpose of this step is to deliver the final solutions to the client.

Delivery is a critical step for earning trust of the clients. Invest time for preparing the solutions. Ensure that the solutions are visually stimulating and organized. Use charts and graphs in your solutions. This will help the clients to understand the logic behind these solutions and retain their interest.

We highlighted few steps that will help you to earn trust of customers and enjoy a long-term relationship with them. Opt for these steps and build a powerful brand image of your company.

When you work as an independent web or graphic designer, you can get projects on the basis of your resume and portfolio. However, when you run a website design company, you have to show your business skills, besides creative skills, to secure new designing projects. You must create an impressive business proposal to convince your clients and beat your competitors.

Here are 12 secrets to write an effective business proposal.

1. Meet Your Client- Before you write the business proposal, meet your client and ask him all the necessary questions. Make a short questionnaire and give it to your client. Once you know all the details about his business, you can write the proposal comfortably.
2. Showcase Your Work- When you meet your client; show him some of the projects your company has delivered successfully. This way he will understand that you are good enough to meet the demands of his project.
3. Do Some Research- Apart from the information you get from your client, you need to do some research on your client’s background, his competitors, target audience and the current condition of his company. This will help you write an organized business proposal.
4. Know the Target Audience- When your client approaches you with a project, try to know his target audience and write clear details about them in the business proposal. For instance, write gender, age group and financial status of the target audience and state clearly how you can help your client grab their attention.
5. Write a Brief Executive Summary- Executive summary includes all project details in a nutshell. Most clients read this part of a business proposal carefully and you must write a brief yet impressive executive summary to convince your client. Show him that you truly understand his requirements and are ready to help him.
6. Discuss the Project Goals- Every design project has a goal, and you must know what your client expects from your design to deliver him exactly what he wants. If your client’s needs and your ideas do not match, he won’t give you the project.
7. Know the Competitors- There are hundreds of web design companies out there and it’s your duty to make sure that clients hire you for their projects. Take a look at your competitor websites and find out their weaknesses. Once you know their weaknesses, write a design proposal that can outshine your competitors.
8. Write Creative Strategy- Discuss your design strategies with your client and explain your decisions. Tell your client how you are going to meet the project goals and help him attract his potential customers.
9. Explain Project Methodology- You must explain your work methodology in the proposal. Show how you are going to handle the project from beginning to the end. This will help your client understand your work procedure and he won’t argue with you about the project deadline.
10. Explain Project Budget- Write the total project cost and the payment method in the business proposal. Break total cost in different parts such as “website design”, “frontend development”, “and backend development”, etc., to assure your client that you are offering him a fair deal.
11. Mention Project Deadline- When you set the project deadline, make sure that you keep some extra days in your hand. Website design is a creative process and sometimes you may spend a few extra days to design a beautiful layout. Therefore, if you think a project will take 10 days, give a 12 days deadline.
12. Give Your Contact Details- Always give your contact details to your client. Give him your mobile number, office landline number, email address, etc., so that he can contact you anytime regarding the project.

A well written and organized proposal can certainly win you a project. After you show the business proposal, don’t forget to send a follow-up email. Let your client realize that you are eager to work with him. If your client is impressed with your proposal, he will hire you for his design project.

A lot of people believe they can become a good professional website designer by purchasing a designing software and following its menus! Have you ever wondered if that is possible? If website design was so simple, why are there institutes teaching it?

Everyone who has been in the web designing industry has come across at some point of time, a software that claims – ‘no need for technical knowledge or skills’. The reality is, these claims are, to an extent, false promises of wish fulfillment. It’s not that the softwares don’t work. They do, and they are quite useful, but they don’t really satisfy the demands of a creative mind.

Creators of such softwares, market their products as ‘can be used by anyone and everyone. No technical knowledge needed.’ However, truth is, one cannot become a skilled web designer overnight by purchasing a software. Some level of technical knowledge is needed to understand the instructions and create designs accordingly.

The makers of design softwares claim to ‘efficiently substitute’ the need for creative thinking. They market their products ‘creating’ professionals and not merely helping them. This promise of instant accomplishment is what drives people to buy the software, because, in the face of an easy solution, no one would want to learn website designing in some media institute for years when they can create beautiful designs at home, with the help of tutorials.

One must not overlook the fact that such softwares are quite impressive, and to the novice, they promise to create amazing designs too by just a few clicks of the mouse. All you have to do is re-enact the steps shown in the video tutorial and voila, the design is ready!

Well, not really. The truth is that no software can create a web design all by itself. No matter how powerful and ‘efficient’ it is, it needs a human to do the work. It only provides the platform and the tools with which to work.

Remember, tutorials can be recorded through the action panel. They can be played back also. But that doesn’t mean the web designing software creates the designs by itself. The ‘designing with software’ trend was started by designers who preferred to take the help of templates instead of coming up with creative designs themselves. There is nothing wrong in it. Softwares save a lot of time and when designers have to work under strict deadlines, softwares are definitely a good option. But creativity cannot be artificially generated and talent can’t be mechanized. This is the most basic fact of the matter. Every website designer should know and trust this fact.

For creating corporate identity design of a company, paying attention to logo design, visual vocabulary, colors, and fonts is important. Unfortunately, most articles offer information about logo, colors, and visual vocabulary, ignoring fonts. For this reason, we have decided to offer crucial information about fonts in today’s article.

Basic Information about Fonts

Font refers to text characters, available in various sizes and styles. These styles can include bold, italic, regular, and light. Fonts can also be classified into various groups, such as serif, sans serif, display, and script fonts. Read on to know more.

• Serif Fonts- These fonts usually assume an upright, narrow shape, with prominent serifs at bottom of the lines that create the letters. Examples of serif fonts can include Times and Garamond.
• Sans-Serif Fonts- Fonts that do not include serifs are known as sans-serif fonts. Examples can include Verdana, Arial, and Tahoma. As compared to serif fonts, they are neater and modern. They are usually used, while developing website design and content.
• Display Fonts- These fonts possess a decorative element. They are usually used in headers or logos.
• Script Fonts- These refer to cursive fonts. Examples can include Nuptial Script and Brush Script.

Apart from these four fonts, other fonts exist as well. However, these four fonts are extensively used in business branding activities.

We have discussed main types of fonts. Now, we will offer you few guidelines that will help you to utilize fonts correctly.

Guidelines for Utilizing Fonts

• Printed Materials- If you are planning to incorporate long blocks of text in printed materials, opt for serif fonts. It will increase readability of the materials.
• Websites/Blogs- Serif-fonts can be your best option for creating website/blog. They are clean, simple, and easy to read. Additionally, remember that you need to pick out an online font that is automatically installed on PCs of most people. Otherwise, your site will appear in the default font chosen by the browser.

Many people complain that it is difficult to control the size of online fonts. Font tags in HTML do not come with sizing control. This means that you need to use them various times throughout every HTML. This is a time consuming affair.

The best way to deal with this situation is to opt for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for modifying the font size.

• Word Documents- For word documents, stick to fonts that are commonly installed in PCs. These can include Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, and Georgia.

A good way of retaining appearance of information is to convert all the documents into PDF files. They embed fonts into respective documents, and one can view them in their original fonts in any PC.

Technical Information regarding Font File Types

If you are planning to purchase fonts for incorporating in your computer, you may be provided with few options. These can include True Types, Open Type, and Post Script fonts. We discuss each of these options in brief.

• Most professional printers opt for Post Script fonts. One format of Post Script font is available in Windows PC and another available for Macintosh PCs.
• True Types fonts are available in Windows PCs. As compared to Post Script fonts, their print quality is poor.
• Open Type fonts are the latest fonts. Limited fonts are available in this particular format. However, these fonts are cross-platform compatible.

Hope you liked our discussion about fonts!