Focus on Effective Coming Soon Pages

When first launching your own website, it can be troubling deciding how to handle the first few weeks. This is generally a time when your website may not be ready to go live online but you own the domain name and branding rights.

In these scenarios a properly designed coming soon page can affect the culture of your site tenfold. Visitors to your website have the option of reading a bit about your company and possibly opting into an e-mail newsletter. I’ll be sharing a few techniques below to consider when first building your website’s home page.

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5 Tips for SEO & User-Friendly Copy

You hear it time and time again: content is king. It’s king because it’s what users want, and it’s king because of SEO – i.e. if you don’t have good content, you’re not going to rank.

Of course, not all content is created equal. While over-optimizing content for search will make it less than user-friendly, focusing too much on usability can compromise its searchability.

So how can your content walk the line between SEO and usability? Well, there are 5 easy tips you can follow when trying to walk your content down that fine line between SEO and usability. (more…)

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How to Design a Proper Banner – One That Actually Works

Let’s address the big pink elephant in the room first. Banners are not dead. They’re not on life support either. They’re doing fine and they’re going to be around for a while.

They’re doing fine mostly because of their new home – Google AdWords. Google Display/Content Network to be precise. If you are (or your client is) advertising on the Content Network and not using banner ads then you’re missing out on a really big and tasty piece of the pie. (more…)

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Legal Guidelines for Freelance Web Designers

Handling the legal side of freelancing could possibly be one of the more annoying tasks required for the job. Having worked as a full-time freelancer I can attest the amount of legal paperwork and information can become overwhelming, especially for newbies entering the field.

No matter what your practice, be it web design to freelance writing, there is generally some form of legal contract you’ll need to create with your clients. Networking comes with the freelance territory, and within that is contracts and due dates for project completion. Below we’ll be considering some great tips for legal actions and pursuing your own career further in freelancing.

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HTML5 & CSS3: Take Your Design to Another Level

While both languages for HTML5 and CSS3 aren’t fully complete yet, taking the time time to familiarize yourself with some of the pointers in this post can really help you achieve that clean look and feel for your site. Let’s take a deeper look at them. (more…)

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Font Size Measures: Options and Preferences

What is the Most Important Element in Designing Your Website? When you begin to design that perfect website, what do you think is the very first thing that you should be concerned with? Color? Templates? Graphic design? No. The first thing on the agenda should be font size.

“Font size,” you say? “Why should one be concerned with something as mundane as font size when there’s a whole website to be concerned about? So, you must be joking, right?” (more…)

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Key Elements in Designing a Product Landing Page

Landing pages for product sales can be seen everywhere. Affiliate marketers are constantly examining some of the newer techniques to mastering digital e-commerce. When the situation involves just a small market segment, the rules for landing page design can change.

Overall it takes a strong designer’s eye to create something extraordinary. Product landing pages offer fantastic insight towards deeper psychological marketing techniques. Here we’ll look into some great strategies for a sales page and what you can do to entice more sales.

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Three Reasons for Feeding Yourself Great Designs

If you want to be a better designer, then you should feed yourself great designs. Forehead-slapping common sense, right? Yet some designers downplay the importance of consuming and getting inspired by great designs. Yet there are 3 reasons why you need to feed yourself great designs.

Designers that think influence and constantly exposing yourself to great designs isn’t that important tend to believe that brilliant work comes from within and that it can be turned on at will. But as creative block—which gets the best of us—shows, creativity is a finicky beast. And a lot of outside factors subconsciously dictate how and when your best designs are created. Therefore, it’s important that you feed yourself great designs. It’s what can help inspire your best design work—whether for yourself or for your clients—as well as keep you going during the creative down periods. (more…)

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Getting Started in iOS User Interface Design

iOS devices are becoming mainstream as avid technology buffs are playing with Apple’s latest technology. The release of the iPad tablet computer along with the HD iPhone 4 retina display has shown an impressive year for company branding.

We’ll be going over a few tips for designing a simple iOS interface in Adobe Photoshop. Out of the graphics software available Photoshop or a similar platform is the easiest option for UI design. With easy access to layers and project icons things become much simpler.

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Web Design Trends in 2011

There is a thin line between design and development, and as we move into a new decade, this line is becoming extremely blurry. Is it enough to draw beautiful mock ups in Photoshop? Maybe 5 years ago. These days, the average internet user requires more. All beauty, with no substance, gets boring after a while. If your only goal is to impress a community of fellow designers with your flashy designs, you’ll find yourself quickly beneath the tide. 2011 is not about beauty, it’s about function. The trends for this new year and emerging decade are responsive design, constant connection and virtual reality.

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