Category: Blog

When it comes to website design, there are so many different styles and directions in which your website can go: it can be anywhere from classy to minimalistic, from playful and vibrant to sleek and modern.

While your final look-and-feel should exude your personal style, line of work, and brand identity, there are a few ground rules that are always applicable.

Great web design feeds into your user experience and functionality while being easy to understand at first glance. Below we’ve gathered five simple website design tips to help make your site effective and compelling:

Web design tips for an outstanding website

1. Keep your homepage minimalistic and free of clutter

2. Design with visual hierarchy in mind

3. Create easy to read website content

4. Ensure your site is easy to navigate

5. Stay mobile friendly

01. Keep your homepage minimalistic and free of clutter

Your website’s homepage should communicate your core message instantaneously. After all, we rarely read every word on a website. Instead, we quickly scan the page, picking out key words, sentences and images. With these known behaviors in mind, it’s better to appeal to emotions rather than word count.

The less site visitors have to read, click on, or remember, the better they’ll be able to process and evaluate your content. By designing for decreasing attention spans, it’s more likely that users will do what you intend them to do.

When learning how to design a website, these simple website design tips will help you break up your content and make for a presentable and inviting homepage design:

• Keep important content above the fold: Visitors should understand what your website is all about as soon as possible, without having to scroll or click anywhere.

• Space out your content: Employ whitespace in between elements. By leaving some areas blank, you’ll give the design a much more spacious, well-balanced feel. As for your text, write in bite-sized, legible paragraphs.

• Add imagery: High-quality media features such as beautiful photographs, vector art or icons, will do wonders as alternative ways to communicate your point.

• Include a call-to-action: From making a purchase to signing up, encourage site visitors to perform the action you intended by placing a call-to-action (CTA) button on your site’s homepage.

02. Design with visual hierarchy in mind

Hierarchy is an important principle of design that helps display your content in a clear and effective manner. Through the correct use of hierarchy, you’ll be able to lead site visitors’ attention to certain page elements in order of priority, starting with the most significant piece.

The main components of visual hierarchy are:

• Size and weight: Highlight your top assets, such as your business name and logo, by making them larger and more visually prominent. Readers tend to naturally gravitate towards large and bold titles first, and only then move on to smaller paragraph text.

• Element placement: Use the right website layout to steer your visitors’ eyes in the right direction. For instance, you can place an important call-to-action button at the very center of the screen, or position your logo at the header.

Once you establish a clear hierarchy for your information, readers can’t help but unconsciously follow the breadcrumbs you have left for them. Then, apply color, contrast, and spacing for further accentuation, remaining mindful of what is drawing the most attention and making sure that it’s always intentional.

Some powerful web design elements to help you achieve a strong visual hierarchy are strips or grid layouts, such as that of the Wix Pro Gallery. For more ideas and inspiration, check out our designer-made website templates.

03. Create easy to read website content

“Readability” measures how easy it is for people to recognize words, sentences, and phrases. When your site’s readability is high, users will be able to effortlessly scan, or skim-read, through it. This way, taking in the information becomes effortless.

Achieving website readability is relatively easy; try these key rules:

• Contrast is key: Sufficient contrast between your text color and background color is important for readability, as well as for website accessibility. While your website color scheme is likely to be representative of your brand colors, make sure that there’s sufficient contrast between your elements. To do so, try using an online tool, such as Contrast Checker.

• Large letter size: Most people will struggle to see smaller fonts. A typical rule of thumb for web design is to keep your body text at least 16pt. That’s a good place to start, but keep in mind that this number completely depends on the fonts you choose for your website.

• Type of fonts: The world of typography offers many types of fonts at our disposal. You can choose between serif fonts (that have little projecting lines on the ends of letters, like Times New Roman) to sans serifs, which literally means “without serif.” Sans serif fonts are typically the best choice for lengthy online texts – like the one you’re currently reading. You can also create interesting font pairings by mixing these different types together. There are also many display fonts that are more on the decorative side, such as script fonts that look handwritten. If you’re going for one of those, make sure not to over use it, so as to avoid an overwhelming effect.

• Limit the number of fonts: Don’t use more than three different typefaces throughout a single website. Some projects may call for more elaborate font combinations, but too many varied typefaces usually appear cluttered, distracting from your brand identity.

• Utilize text themes: To establish a clear hierarchy, make sure that your written website content is varied in size and weight – from a large title, to smaller subheadings, to the even smaller paragraph or body text. This handy website design tip can ensure that there’s always something drawing readers’ attention.

04. Ensure your site is easy to navigate

It may be in your nature to break the mold, but website navigation is not the place to … Read the rest

So, are you thinking of starting a web design agency? It’s a glorious idea. Covid-19 has shown businesses how successful or disruptive a good online presence can be for businesses. During this pandemic, we have all seen that the demand for web design has increased and will continue to increase.

… Read the rest

Being a web designer involves harmoniously combining visuals and content. But non-technical skills, like collaboration and communication, are also important.

… Read the rest

On this page, we’ll discuss why design is important and provide you with seven must-have design elements for your website. If you need help creating your dream website, call us today.

As you look into redesigning your website, you may wonder the importance to website design. How does it impact your audience and your business? Let’s look at five reasons web design is important.

1. It sets the first impression

When your audience visits your website, it gives them their first impression of your business. They will judge your business within seconds. In these first few seconds, you want to make a positive impact on your audience.

If your website looks unappealing or outdated, your audience will immediately have a negative impression of your business. They won’t find your website appealing, which deters them from your page. You’ll miss out on leads because they’ll leave your page for a competitor’s page.

Web design is important because it impacts how your audience perceives your brand. The impression you make on them can either get them to remain on your page and learn about your business or leave your page and turn to a competitor. A good web design helps you keep your leads on your page.

2. It aids your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy

Many web design elements and practices influence how you publish content on your website, which in turn affects how search engine spiders crawl and index your website.

This is one thing you cannot afford to mess up. If your on-page SEO fundamentals are not up to snuff, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle for visibility from the start.

Aside from how content is published on your website, certain web design elements can directly affect SEO in and of themselves. Web design can be difficult to understand if you’re not familiar with how it works, but to put it simply, your code needs to be SEO-friendly.

The best way to ensure proper web design practices (and subsequent search engine visibility) is to partner up with a web design agency that knows what they’re doing.

3. It sets the impression for customer service

People can judge how you will treat them by looking at your website. Your design gives them insight as to how you view your audience. If you don’t put any effort into your website’s design, your audience knows that you won’t put effort into helping them.

Your website is like a customer service representative. If your website is bright, modern, and inviting, your audience will feel more welcome on your page. You’ll give the impression that you are open and welcoming to new people who visit your website.

On the other hand, an outdated and unappealing site makes your business appear cold and aloof. People don’t want to check out a business that doesn’t value them enough to make a good first impression.

Think of your web design as the digital face of your business. If someone walked into your physical location, wouldn’t you want a friendly face to greet them and make them feel welcome? An updated and modern web design is the equivalent to a friendly face greeting your new visitors.

4. It builds trust with your audience

People don’t trust poorly designed websites. If they see your poor design or the information looks outdated, they won’t trust your site. They may view your site as seedy or shady because you don’t have an updated web design.

Think about a person looking to place a bulk order with a manufacturing company. They’re spending a tremendous amount of money, which means if your manufacturing website design doesn’t convey trust, they’ll find another business to fulfill their order.

On the other hand, a professional site signals trust with your audience. They will trust your business and feel comfortable checking it out further.

It’s important to build trust with your audience so they remain on your site. When visitors remain on your site longer, you create more opportunities for your business to capture those leads.

5. Your competitors are doing it

If you need a reason for why web design is important, here’s a big one: Your competitors are already utilizing web design. If you want to remain in competition with them, you must use web design for your site.

You want your website to stand out from the competition. If you have an old, outdated, and low-quality website, your competitor’s will outrank you. Their well-designed website will perform better than your website.

This means you’ll lose leads to your competitors. They’ll attract more leads to their page because their page is more appealing.

Your website’s design is an opportunity for you to set your business apart from the competition. When you’re competing with other businesses, you generally have the same services and similar pricing. You need that one thing that will make your business stand out from the rest.

A well-designed website is an opportunity for your business to showcase your unique features. You can show your audience why they should choose your business over the competition.

6. It creates consistency

When you’re trying to get new leads for your business, you want to build up your brand. You want your audience to get familiar with your brand so they choose you when they’re ready to convert. Online web designs are important because they help create consistency across your page.

You need to have the same fonts, styles, and layouts across every page on your website. If you have a different design on every page, this will make your site look unprofessional. It also makes it more challenging to build brand recognition because your audience won’t know which colors to associate with your brand.

If your website is not consistent, people will bounce from yours to one that looks more professional. By building consistency, you keep leads on your page longer and get them familiar with your business. You’ll earn more leads and conversions down the line when you redesign your site for this key … Read the rest

Most consumers perform in-depth online research on products and services before making purchase decisions. A study by the eCommerce Foundation shows 88 percent of buyers will search for product information before buying it online.

By CHRISTIAN KRUSE

Such a purchase behavior stresses the value of a content-rich, professionally designed website for a business. What’s more, consumers spend more time on beautifully designed sites than they do on plain and basic ones. Here are 10 ways a good web design impacts your business.

1. Serves as Your Business’ First Impression

Potential customers get their first impression of your company by checking out your website. They form an opinion about your business in a matter of seconds. So you should focus on leaving a lasting positive effect on your audience within these few seconds by ensuring your website is appealing, user-friendly, highly responsive, and has a fast loading speed.

A site that appears unattractive or old-fashioned sets a negative first impression of your brand. It wards off potential customers and drives them to your competitor’s page. But a decent website design helps maintain your audience on your page, which improves leads conversion.

2. Boosts Trust and Brand Consistency

As mentioned above, your website design determines how most people judge the integrity of your business. Trendy and professional website designs tend to promote trust. Outdated and unprofessional web designs, on the other hand, make users doubt your credibility. Brand consistency is another notable way that a decent web design encourages trust. Consumers recognize prominent and successful brands by just looking at things like their colours, logos, or styles. So it’s important to ensure things that your customers identify your business with are reflected in your website design.

Ensure the outline, styles, and fonts are the same throughout every page on your site. If every page has a different design, your site will appear unattractive and unprofessional. Building brand recognition will also become a hassle because your target audience won’t easily identify things that represent your brand.

3.  Enhances Usability

A good design allows visitors to effortlessly access what they’re searching for from your website. According to a 2015 web usability report, 86 percent of website visitors are looking for information about your products or services, 65 percent search for contact details, and 52 percent look for your business’ About page. Good web design makes these things extremely easy to find. Otherwise, your visitors will have a bad user experience and will spend less time on your site.

Your website may work well, but a bad design may make visitors feel that it’s difficult to use or locate what they want. Users are likely to enjoy using an aesthetically-pleasing site more than a dull site even if the two websites are identical when it comes to functioning. That means a good website design enhances usability along with the perception of usability.

Due to the complex nature of web design, consider partnering with a professional design agency. In the same breath, hire a reputable agency for translation services, to help you offer insightful and consistent product messaging that resonates with your global customers, in any language.

4. Eases Navigation

A high-quality design makes your site easy to navigate. Many professional designers usually apply Hick’s Law when it comes to website design. This law basically states that the duration taken to make a decision is proportional to the number of choices available. If you’re provided with many choices, you’ll take longer to make a decision, and vice versa.

When professional designers build website navigation with Hick’s Law in mind, they want to simplify and reduce the number of options so that visitors can easily decide what action to take or where to go. Make your site easy to navigate by reducing the number of options to five or less. Take a look at your product menu and merge similar options into a single option.  That way, visitors will find your website easy to navigate and easy to use.

5.  Fosters Your SEO Strategy

Various web design components and techniques have a huge impact on your site’s content publishing capability, which in turn influences how top search engines crawl and rank your page. That aside, some web design components can hurt your SEO strategy. Sydney SEO Agency says that one of the most common mistakes that businesses make is prioritizing design over functionality. In 2021, with more than 58% of users choosing mobile as their primary search device, having a fast, responsive website is imperative to SEO.

To enhance the visibility of your page, make use of SEO-friendly web-design elements and techniques. If you strongly feel that this is not part of your expertise, you can always hire a competent SEO company that will optimize your website for search engines and drive organic traffic to your site, and enhance your online presence.

6. Improves Website Loading Speed

A well-designed site tends to load quickly on all devices, including tablets, smartphones, and desktops. A page loads in a matter of seconds due to the fluid grids and high-quality, responsive visual media. A visitor is more likely to stay longer on websites that load faster than on those that take ages to load. In fact, one study found that 53 percent of mobile users will leave a website if pages are unresponsive or take a significant amount of time to load (more than three seconds). The same study revealed that sites that load quickly keep visitors engaged for a long time and realize an uptick in conversion rates.

7. Reduces Bounce Rates

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who visit a specific website and abandon it after checking out only one page. As stated above, a well-designed site with a fast loading speed means users will interact with your website longer and that will lower your bounce rate. By spending more time on your site, visitors will be more likely to open other pages on your website, learn more about you and … Read the rest

UI and UX are two distinct facets of web design, yet they work hand-in-hand. While UI focuses on your design interface and how a user interacts with it, UX emphasizes a user’s experience as they use your product or service.

… Read the rest

As a software engineer, I spend a lot of time reading and writing design documents. After having gone through hundreds of these docs, I’ve seen firsthand a strong correlation between good design docs and the ultimate success of the project.

This article is my attempt at describing what makes a design document great.

The article is split into 4 sections:

• Why write a design document
• What to include in a design document
• How to write it
• The process around it

Why write a design document?

A design doc — also known as a technical spec — is a description of how you plan to solve a problem.

There are lots of writings already on why it’s important to write a design doc before diving into coding. So all I’ll say here is:

A design doc is the most useful tool for making sure the right work gets done.

The main goal of a design doc is to make you more effective by forcing you to think through the design and gather feedback from others. People often think the point of a design doc is to teach others about some system or serve as documentation later on. While those can be beneficial side effects, they are not the goal in and of themselves.

As a general rule of thumb, if you are working on a project that might take 1 engineer-month or more, you should write a design doc. But don’t stop there — a lot of smaller projects could benefit from a mini design doc too.

Great! If you are still reading, you believe in the importance of design docs. However, different engineering teams, and even engineers within the same team, often write design docs very differently. So let’s talk about the content, style, and process of a good design doc.

What to include in a design doc?

A design doc describes the solution to a problem. Since the nature of each problem is different, naturally you’d want to structure your design doc differently.

To start, the following is a list of sections that you should at least consider including in your next design doc:

Title and People

The title of your design doc, the author(s) (should be the same as the list of people planning to work on this project), the reviewer(s) of the doc (we’ll talk more about that in the Process section below), and the date this document was last updated.

Overview

A high-level summary that every engineer at the company should understand and use to decide if it’s useful for them to read the rest of the doc. It should be 3 paragraphs max.

Context

A description of the problem at hand, why this project is necessary, what people need to know to assess this project, and how it fits into the technical strategy, product strategy, or the team’s quarterly goals.

Goals and Non-Goals

The Goals section should:

• describe the user-driven impact of your project — where your user might be another engineering team or even another technical system
• specify how to measure success using metrics — bonus points if you can link to a dashboard that tracks those metrics

Non-Goals are equally important to describe which problems you won’t be fixing so everyone is on the same page.

Milestones

A list of measurable checkpoints, so your PM and your manager’s manager can skim it and know roughly when different parts of the project will be done. I encourage you to break the project down into major user-facing milestones if the project is more than 1 month long.

Use calendar dates so you take into account unrelated delays, vacations, meetings, and so on. It should look something like this:

Start Date: June 7, 2018
Milestone 1 — New system MVP running in dark-mode: June 28, 2018
Milestone 2 - Retire old system: July 4th, 2018
End Date: Add feature X, Y, Z to new system: July 14th, 2018

Add an [Update] subsection here if the ETA of some of these milestone changes, so the stakeholders can easily see the most up-to-date estimates.

Existing Solution

In addition to describing the current implementation, you should also walk through a high-level example flow to illustrate how users interact with this system and/or how data flow through it.

A user story is a great way to frame this. Keep in mind that your system might have different types of users with different use cases.

Proposed Solution

Some people call this the Technical Architecture section. Again, try to walk through a user story to concretize this. Feel free to include many sub-sections and diagrams.

Provide a big picture first, then fill in lots of details. Aim for a world where you can write this, then take a vacation on some deserted island, and another engineer on the team can just read it and implement the solution as you described.

Alternative Solutions

What else did you consider when coming up with the solution above? What are the pros and cons of the alternatives? Have you considered buying a 3rd-party solution — or using an open source one — that solves this problem as opposed to building your own?

Testability, Monitoring, and Alerting

I like including this section because people often treat this as an afterthought or skip it altogether, and it almost always comes back to bite them later when things break and they have no idea how or why.

Cross-Team Impact

How will this increase the on-call and dev-ops burden?
How much money will it cost?
Does it cause any latency regression to the system?
Does it expose any security vulnerabilities?
What are some negative consequences and side effects?
How might the support team communicate this to the customers?

Open Questions

Any open issues that you aren’t sure about, contentious decisions that you’d like readers to weigh in on, suggested future work, and so on. A tongue-in-cheek name for this section is the “known unknowns”.

Detailed Scoping and Timeline

This section is mostly … Read the rest

Nowadays, technology is advanced and upgraded. For that packaging system has been changed a lot. Due to advanced packaging technologies, modern methods can decrease the amount of waste. The modern techniques focus on the maximum resources and concentrate on waste management. In this way, modern packaging can also save a lot of money. Awareness of the customer is also playing a valuable role in the emergence of the modern packaging system. The modern method of packaging is very much sustainable. These packagings use eco-friendly materials.

Packaging and its relevance:

The packaging is very much essential to protect products that are distributed in the market for sell. There are so many varieties of packaging such as boxes, cans, bottles, bags, envelopes and wrappers as well. Above all, the packaging is one of the main factors for selling. Many companies choose different types of packaging to sell their products through better packaging and designing. We all know that attractive packaging not only grabs the attention of the customers but also ensure the protection of the item and its longevity as well.

So, the modern methods of packaging are very much valuable and it also allows to prevent wastage. The modern packaging system can prevent foods from spoiling and getting damaged before reaching its final destination. So, increased method of packaging can save a lot of money and time as well. It also protects the products and foods.

Some modern and advanced packaging technologies:

Here are some modern packaging systems that can save a lot of money and also eco-friendly. These advanced systems are such as follows:

Refill system:

It is one of the modern forms of packaging. It reduces waste and follows waste management as well. In this system, the manufacturer reuses the packaging materials. So, it allows for less waste production. The wastage is being dumped into the land after production. This particular form of packaging is very much popular and well-known in Germany and other countries. In these countries, beer, milk and detergent are being refilled into the old packaging system. This type of packaging is environment-friendly and cost-effective as well. It offers so many environmental benefits. Nowadays, many companies produce refilled water bottles instead of small water bottles. Many people argue that refilled items are expensive. But if you are looking at the advantages then, you can notice that refillable items are considered as more favoured and beneficial as well.

Flat packaging:

It is another beneficial packaging systems to cut down the wastage. Apart from this, it also reduces the larger and bigger packaging materials. It is also a new concept of packaging. This packaging system is introduced commercially by IKEA. This packaging uses the form or method of packaging that are fabricated in the flat portions. This packaging system can be designed quickly and assembled easily as well. The main advantage of this packaging system is its flatness. This type of packaging is space-efficient and also needs less material. So, it requires less money to produce this particular type of packaging. The storage and shipping charges are comparatively low in this packaging system. For furniture packaging, this package system works better. It is also useful for packaging wares, gadgets, toys and all.

Bulk packaging:

This particular packaging system is also one of the best packaging systems to reduce waste. In this packaging system, the manufacturers do not use small, fancy and also unnecessary items and materials. Apart from this, the bulk package system offers and allows materials to be used on other occasions. Therefore, it is one fo the reasonable methods of packaging.

In the bulk packaging, there are two different packaging methods such as flexible and rigid packaging. Flexible packaging can offer so many flexibilities and benefits than rigid packaging.

Active packaging:

This type of packaging can enhance the lifetime of the product. It also protects the products from damage. The active packaging helps to keep the food intact and extending the shelf-life of the product. The active packaging systems are such as follows:

• Oxygen scavenger
• Carbon dioxide scavenger
• Ethylene scavenger
• Preservative releasers
• Moisture absorbers
• Odour absorbers

Intelligent packaging:

Intelligent packaging is for protecting the food items. It also controls the quality of packed foods. This type of packaging follows these things:

• Time and temperature indicator
• Indicator of freshness
• Pathogen indicators

These all are different advanced packaging technologies. Apart from this, modern packaging offers a simplified design. The biggest shift is to transform into simplified and minimal design. In the simplified designs, the packaging needs bold colours and clean labelling as well. The using of bold colours are very much popular and common in children’s items. Using the same colour pallets also help to identify different products of the same brand. It also helps to make the brand attractive and noticeable.

Cleaners labelling is one of the necessary and convenient matters of advanced packaging. It makes consumers more aware of what they are buying. Clean labelling is used for brand transparency. The user will appreciate this a lot. The clean labelling elaborates on what the product offers.

The modern packaging follows less packaging as the excess packaging can be quite frustrating and it creates a lot of waste. For example, the box of a toothpaste tube has no purpose. It comes to give a better look at the product.

Many companies now switch over recycled paper packaging. It has much less carbon footprint. Many companies and brands use the refill packages instead of bottles and containers. These types of refill packages or pouches contain less plastic than bottles. These pouches also take less space. The packaging is a part of the product and its marketing. For safe storage, proper packaging is important and needed. The reusable packaging system enhances and ensures the safety of the product. Pharmaceutical and food products use smart and advanced packaging method. The smart and advanced packaging system follows the low cost. It is also a smart way to cut down the material cost and manage wastages. These types of advanced packagings … Read the rest