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 [. […]
The average Web site on the Internet doesn’t scroll horizontally, it has vertical scrolling. That means when there is more content on a Web page than there is displayed in your Web browser, the site will scroll down to show you the rest of the content. Web sites don’t have to have a vertical scroll, but it has become the norm.
Another option you have when creating a site is to have it scroll horizontally. This means the site will scroll right to left, instead of up and down. There are some designers who are using the side-scrolling option and it just doesn’t work, but there are also those who are able to use this design method properly. What it really comes down to is whether or not the site you’re working on is compatible with a horizontal scroll.
Not all businesses can benefit from a side-scrolling Web sites. If your Web site doesn’t naturally work with the design, a horizontal scroll is just going to confuse people. One thing that comes with vertical scrolling being the norm is that it’s what most people expect when they are introduced to a new site. If you decide to make your site scroll sideways, make sure there’s good reason for it.
Horizontal scrolling can work for photography sites, Web design and other not-so-business-like sites. If you’re site is supposed to be fun and encourage people to play around with it, then this kind of scrolling can work for you. In general however, a Web site should be easy to use, and horizontal scroll makes it more difficult. If you’re interested in this kind of scrolling, check out some inspirational horizontal scrolling Web sites.
If you decide to go the horizontal scrolling route, make sure to take into consideration that not everyone has the same resolution on their monitor. If you don’t take this into account, it’s much easier to forget to make sure everything is included on the screen that you want there. People with lower resolutions will end up needing to scroll down as well as sideways if you aren’t careful.
After you learn the basics of how to design and code a Web site, there is still the matter of figuring out how best to design it for your specific purpose. What you think looks good, may not look good to everyone else, especially if you’re trying to get them to buy something from you.There are certain ways for you to improve the functionality of your ecommerce site in order to potentially improve your sales.
Building a successful ecommerce site requires more than just a good looking design. You have to make things easy for your customers. Never sacrifice ease of use to make things look better. The first thing you need to do is make sure things are easy to buy. Make your products visible and give people all the information they need to know before buying. Make sure not to include any excess information they could get lost in, and make sure to limit the amount of clicks in takes to get through the buying process. All the customer really needs to know is what they are buying, if it’s the right product for them, and how much it costs.
Also make sure to create several paths that customers can take to get to the purchase page. Using more than one path allows customers to find products in more than one way. If you have a directory, search and featured sections, then customers have multiple ways to find what they’re looking for. Combine that with a simple check out process, and it makes things a lot smoother.
Make sure the “buy” buttons are big enough for people to easily see, and don’t clutter up your Web sites with a bunch of unnecessary material. There are a lot of tips to turn browsers into buyers, but as long as you use some common sense and think like a buyer, you should be able to create something that will work. Focus on usability more than design aesthetics, and make sure it’s easy for people to buy what you’re selling. If they’ve found your site, you probably don’t need a whole lot of convincing, but give them enough information to feel comfortable with buying from your site.
The video below suggests six pages that ever ecommerse site should have. Those pages should be enough information for average buyers. Including more information than what is necessary could clutter your Web site up too much. Keeping things clean and simple is probably the best way to go for most sites.
Stealing is something very common in Web design. People are always being inspired by the clever things they see on Web sites, and then going and trying to reproduce a form of them on their own site. Although a lot of this is just a evolution of Web deign, there is definitely a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
A designer should never steal another site’s complete design or concept. While little things throughout the site might inspire similar functions you want to produce, make sure to implement a good chunk of your own creativity as well. It’s okay to be inspired, but that’s as far as it should go. Never steal someone else’s code, or mirror their design. An article from SitePoint describes this rule of stealing in simple terms: it’s okay to steal the inspiration, but not the outcome.
If you find yourself in a situation where you feel someone has been “inspired” by your Web site a little too much, there are actions you can take to try and take back what’s yours. It’s good to be a little forgiving, after all, imitation is the greatest form of flattery. But if the offending site is obviously ripping off what you worked so hard for, it’s time to do something about it.
A great article was published on Freelance Switch concerning what to do if someone steals you work, and it’s a good place to start when trying to build up defenses around your content.
The first suggestion in the article can seem a little amateurish, but that means it may be effective against those amateur thieves who are looking for good content to steal. At the end of everything you create and own online, you can put a phrase that lets everyone know that your content has copyrights, and that it isn’t okay to steal the content without your permission.
If you need tog o further than a simple warning on your Web sites, you can always send a cease and desist request, or contact a lawyer if you want things to get messy. Make sure to examine what the damages are that were caused by the infringement, and if they are small, then it might be best just to let some stuff slide.
