USA SEO Pros provides a number of different solutions for businesses who are trying to improve their Internet marketing campaigns. The company specializes in search engine optimization, but also provides Web design, blogging, press releases, and other things that can help business gain exposure online. If you'd like to learn more about what the business can do, please visit the main USASEOPros Web site to learn more.
Today we’re announcing the winners of the UPrinting contest that we held on WDD for the past week. Many thanks to all of you who participated. The response was great and we’ve got almost 500 comments. Each of the 10 winners has won a set of 500 free business cards of their choice with free shipping to [...]
Ugly designs abound on the web, and behind each and every one of them is a “designer”. In many of these cases the designers behind the sites are simply incompetent. They’re often amateur designers or those who have little or no design training or people who design their own sites based on a [...]
Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the [...]
Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today. So [. […]
Content sliders are extremely versatile forms of navigation that can be used to display all sorts of information, such as images, popular posts, social information and product features. Some have automatic slideshow capabilities or buttons to scroll sideways or up and down, and most of them feature a transition effect, usually a slide motion. Sliders can be […]
Recently, the notion of killing the design community has come up on a few blogs (sometimes indirectly), creating many intense conversations on the direction the design community has taken over the past couple of years, and what can be done about it. The possibility that such discussions are going to improve the [...]
We all know that as web designers, we should market ourselves both online and offline. For online purposes, a great portfolio website or blog is a perfect way to spread the word, but for offline purposes, nothing beats the traditional business card. We’ve partnered with UPrinting to bring an amazing contest to WDD. One week from today, [...]
As the first thing visitors see, home pages and headers often steal the design spotlight. But above-the-fold thinking neglects the natural flow of vertical page layout. What happens when people reach the end of a page? You can bet that a simple copyright statement won’t hold visitors’ attention, but many pages are designed with the expectation that [...]
Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the [...]
Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today. So [. […]
There are a few very helpful landing page design tips that people can take advantage of when they decide they need specific pages to attract customers to different kinds of products on their Web site. If your site offers more than on kind of service or product, it may be a good idea for you to create different pages there serve different purposes.
For example, if you sell different kinds of auto parts, it might be a good idea for you to advertise for those different parts separately online, and if you do, it’d be a good idea to have those different advertisements go to different landing pages. Below of a few suggestions on how to do landing pages correctly. If a landing page is done right, it can increase your sales significantly.
Know your desired user by defining you landing page purpose
If you sell cheese and crackers then your landing page purpose is to sell cheese and crackers to hungry, cheese-and-cracker-loving people. If you sell cell phones along with cheese and crackers, then you have two landing page purposes and need two landing pages. Don’t make your landing page a one-size-fits-all for everything you offer. People are going to your site for a purpose. Know what that purpose is a use it to your advantage.
Simple Design
With any Web design these days, going crazy with graphics, flashing text or anything that will distract your user from the intended purpose is a bad thing. Subtlety is key in your overall design. Make it very simple for your customers to find what they want and purchase it, no one is going to be amazed by flashing images, unless that happens to be what you’re selling.
Focus on Purpose/Interest and the Call to Action (conversion)
These go hand in hand, and they are what should stand out since the site is ultimately built for a specific type of user with a specific interest and a specific purpose.
Simplify your forms There is no reason to make your forms anything more than they have to be. If you Web site urges people to sign up through some kind of form, make it easy for them. Make the forms in logical place, and only have users fill in the information that is necessary.
Testimonials - depending on the landing page Depending on the kind of product or service you’re providing, testimonials can be an excellent thing to include on a landing page. Testimonials can provide credibility and trust to your business, which will make potential customers more likely to buy from you.
Check out the video below if you need some more convincing on why landing pages are a good thing to focus on when creating a successful online business.
There are many reasons to think designing a website is an easy process. With the amount of software programs out there and with the number of free templates, it might seem like anyone can create a website. There are, however, many guidelines in the process of web design that not all templates include.
Here’s a list of some of the key design aspects needed to make an effective, functional and appealing design. No matter what you use for a design, whether it be a free template or building from scratch, including these simple design tips can go a long way to achieving the best possible website design.
The first tip seems to be one of the most important in designing websites today: You need to make the site more usable for the people using mobile devices. The idea here is to increase the hit area on links for easier navigation on touch-screen phones. By increasing the padding of the links it’ll make it more accessible to touch the link you want to go to through your phone for better mapping.
Other web design keys to creating a quality design:
1) Make sure images and bad code do not slow down load and response time. This can cause problems with the effectiveness of your website. People are usually impatient when it comes to view websites, so slow load time is a very bad thing to have. It can also hurt in overall exposure of your website; a site with bad source code will not rank highly on search engines.
2) Bulky Flash Designs - We all know that Flash makes a site stand out and look more appealing than just plan images and text. The problem with Flash on many websites is the usefulness of the Flash. Most designers incorporate Flash design but forget to make it user compatible. This might make the site look good, but it weakens the usability.
3) Typography is a major key in design, more important than most people realize. There are three things to keep in mind.
a) The website tagline explains what the company does and what makes it unique among competitors. Your tagline should communicate your site purpose within the crucial first 10 seconds.
b) Split content and make it easy to read. First, content can not be too long on the pages. If it is not said in the first two paragraphs, then it will not be understood. Also, when writing content about whatever your business is doing, it should make sense to the common educated person. Use simple words and simple ideas.
c) Size matters. Make the font size easy for all screens and people with all eye sights. There are design tools to make the size of the text expandable, but to play it safe, text should be no smaller than 12pt in content. The optimal level should be 14-16pt. Take into consideration that your view is someone in there 40’s with the requirements of reading glasses to view things up close. This should make it easy to determine size and color of the text.
These are just a few tips for when you’re beginning to make your own websites. The rules get more complex as you dive deeper into the web design world, but don’t worry, the information is out there to help you at every part of the journey.
