WordPress is certainly a great tool, and it’s quite easy to get started. You can count on a lot of good resources (like this humble blog) and you can even dig into WP’s source code if you know PHP quite well. (more…)
An ecommerce site needs to be conversion friendly. The site must attract visitors and convert them into paying customers. Improved conversions are a direct result of a site that offers a satisfying shopping experience. When designing ecommerce sites, you need to make sure your site has been designed from a target shopper’s point of view. Give them what they want and you have a profitable site, but create a site that doesn’t cater to their needs you will have to say good bye to any chance of achieving a high conversion ratio. (more…)
Chances are, you’ve heard about the myriad ways in which the agile development method is changing the face of software development. If you’ve worked in the design world, you may even have given agile a try yourself, or at least found yourself the victim of an overeager manager who wanted to “shake things up” and “think outside the Waterfall box.” (more…)
Have you ever thought about how many customers you lose by having a slow site? And I’m not talking about file size only, as we rely on browser capacities to understand our code, we need to consider the processing time also. (more…)
Since WP 3.1, we’ve had post formats. Most people don’t know what that is and most developers don’t make use of this great tool.
You should know about it since we’ll probably have a great increase on post formats usage with the upcoming WP 3.6 version. There we’ll find a better post formats UI, and certainly a big incentive for users to understand and use it accordingly. (more…)
Every day we have new and better browser versions. Real browsers (like Firefox and Chrome) have reached their 20th version a while ago, and the awesome features list is just increasing. On the other hand, we as developers must ensure that our products work fine in older browsers (but not IE6 kind of older), since many paying customers can be using IE8 (or 7?) or even slower machines that don’t allow you massive JS or HTML5 work. (more…)
Flat design is a graphic style that aims to avoid any graphic element providing no significant value to the structure of a template. This type of visual design purely avoid any form of abstract “decorative” elements. Gradients, reliefs, volumes, realistic forms are erased to make room for simple solids. (more…)
Just like every other element of web design, color palettes follow fads that are constantly evolving. This year’s color trends are as diverse as they are compelling; brights and neons combine with greyscale to add some zing to clean, modern styles, while pastel palettes lend a softness to playful, cartoony designs. And from one end of the line to the other, color blocking in any hue has been enthusiastically employed. (more…)
Prior to selling my web agency last year and starting uGurus, a new venture to help web professionals become more profitable, I pitched a lot of website projects. Unfortunately for a lot of freelancers, I was the “other company” that the customer decided to move forward with. Like Beatrix vs. Master Pai Mei, it wasn’t a contest. If the title of this post led you to believe that I was going to outline a fair and balanced tit for tat, you might want to adjust your sitting position at this time. But…if you think my #1 competitor, as an agency, was other agencies, think again. (more…)
It’s easy to get caught up in the private world of web design, spending too much time playing with the latest CSS tricks, or flipping through the coolest design showcases. You start forgetting that your work isn’t all about being on the cutting edge and snagging a web design award or two. The reality is that the latest and greatest design trends are irrelevant, and sometimes even alienating, to the majority of audiences. Unfortunately, that kind of work is often only appropriate for an audience of other designers, and those projects are rare. (more…)
