Recent technological advancements have prompted some people to think that pencil drawings have become obsolete. Others believe that designers can incorporate pencil drawings only in printed materials. However, both these concepts are wrong.

The reality is that despite recent technological explosion, pencil drawings have retained their popularity. Apart from incorporating them in printed materials, you also use them for designing a website. We discuss the importance of pencil drawings in web designing.

1. Provides warmth to serious websites

Many people find serious sites boring and a little cold. To make your site more ‘humane’, you can opt for pencil drawings. With the help of creative pencil drawings, you can add warmth and informality to your site.

Some people may reject this idea because they believe that using pencil drawings indicates an unprofessional approach. However, this is not true. Eye-catching pencil drawings can add a unique appeal to your site, while maintaining its professional attitude.

Of course, you should consider the fact that design is a partial aspect of a website. Along with designs, you need to pay attention to the content as well.

2. Perfect for children’s site

When it comes to children’s sites, one can happily use pencil sketches. Pencil drawings in children’s websites can easily attract attention of the target audience (children, their parents, and teachers in this case). Furthermore, these drawings can convey your message to them in a simple manner. To make the site even more effective, opt for a powerful layout.

3. Makes the site appear playful

Users visit sites to find good information. Using pencil drawings cleverly can allow you to fulfill this requirement of users. If you manage to tell a story or offer information through pencil drawings, it will create a positive impression on the minds of your target audience.

4. Spices up the header

Header is a critical aspect of the site because it highlights the website theme in brief. Incorporating pencil drawings in headers can be an innovative idea. They can perk up overall look of the site.

5. Suitable for sites with any color scheme, even grey ones!

Another advantage of pencil drawings is that these are suitable for sites with any color scheme. Even if you have opted for grey color scheme for your site, you can use pencil drawings without any hesitation.

Many dislike using pencil drawings because they are mostly in black and white. They think that using pencil drawings in web designs will make a site appear boring. However, the truth is that when used correctly, pencil sketches can look good even in colorful sites. In fact, using pencil drawings in a colorful site prevents it from appearing overwhelming.

In web design, using everything in moderation is a good idea. The rule applies to pencil drawings as well. Incorporating excessive pencil drawings in websites can have a damaging impact. Rather, stick to necessary and minimal usage.

The main advantage of using pencil drawings in website design is that it adds a personal touch to the site. It lends the site a distinct personality, making users feel that they are talking to a fellow human being. For best results, opt for minimal usage of pencil drawings.

In large-scale corporations, the process of offering and receiving feedback is formal and systematic. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the web design industry. Website designers usually have to seek feedback on their own. Moreover, providing designers with feedback depends on the attitude of users. This further complicates the issue.

Despite the problems associated with offering and receiving feedback in the website design industry, its importance cannot be discounted. We explain why feedback is important and how to make the most of it.

Importance of Feedback

Website designing is a creative activity. However, web designs are usually used to fulfill practical goals. These can include increasing visitors, enhancing conversation rate, and fulfilling business targets of a company. To meet these goals successfully, website designs should be able to connect with the audience and fulfill their requirements. Herein lies the importance of feedback.

Receiving feedback regularly sharpens your skills and helps you to polish your craft. Furthermore, it helps you to understand pulse of the audience and thus, modify your designs accordingly. Feedback is somewhat similar to the trial and error method. It helps you to realize your weak areas, work on them, and finally, improve.

How You Can Use Feedback Constructively ?

Receiving feedback is not enough. You have to understand the point of view of the users who have provided you with feedback, evaluate it, and select the right suggestions. In brief, you should take informed decisions.

Here are few tips that will help you to use feedback constructively and improve your skills.

• Start early

Many web designers ask for feedback, only after they are completely done with website designing. If you opt for this method, changing anything in the website (at a later stage) will be a more tedious process. For this reason, you should request for feedback, soon after you start the work. Consider feedback a critical part of the web development process.

• Be open towards feedback

Web designing is a creative job. Therefore, it is natural that some will love your designs, while others will hate it. Even if you receive a negative comment, do not take it personally. Remember that visitors do not have any personal grudge against you. Understand the fact that negative feedback will help you to realize your weaknesses and grow.

• Do not ask feedback from experts, always

Many people may find the above suggestion surprising. After all, most of us look for experts’ opinions about web designs. Despite the craze for suggestions from experts, fact remains is that common people can offer you a fresh and interesting viewpoint about your designs. Remember that, when it comes to feedback, honest suggestions always score high.

• Approach directly

While asking for feedback, adopt a direct approach. Avoid wasting time of the respondents. State your objective clearly and keep the questions short.

• Understand that it is an ongoing process

To grow as a designer, you need to ask and evaluate the feedback regularly. This will help you learn new things and stay in touch with the latest trends. Consider the fact that receiving and evaluating feedback is a continuous process.

Feedback helps you to understand weak areas of your designs and improve them. While asking for feedback, keep your questions brief. Do not target only the experts as your respondents. Rather, ask for feedback from people who may not possess an in-depth knowledge about website designing.

Adobe has been in spotlights in recent times owing to its product launches at much awaited annual Max Conference 2011. Not only it has announced of its upcoming Cloud service, but Adobe has also made designers excited by unveiling a number of tablet based apps. Incidentally, these Touch apps are meant to be used in sync with its Cloud service.

Among six design apps targeted at Honeycomb Android tablet users, Photoshop Touch App has garnered maximum interest and spotlight at Max 2011 Conference. This is natural given Photoshop’s huge user base and unmatched popularity among graphic design professionals.

Like other 5 Touch Apps, Photoshop Touch also costs $10 and this will make it accessible for most tablet users. Initially people using Honeycomb 3.1 tablets will be able to use this app and later Adobe will release a version made for iPad 2. Photoshop Touch app may not serve as a replacement for Photoshop CS 5, which is used by millions of graphic and web design professionals worldwide but it will act as a complementary tool.

Even though Photoshop Touch was shown at this conference on a prototype tablet made by Samsung, chances are there it will run smoothly on other tablets with Honeycomb. It responds to both finger and stylus inputs nicely, which is a boon for designers. It has a nice layout with Layers palette placed at right side and tool palette appearing at left of tablet screen. There are icons on screen’s top with menus to edit and manage images. Image adjustment options offered in this app are nowhere close to a full – fledged PC based image editor but a step ahead of Photoshop Express, available for Apple users.

To aid users, this app comes with a built-in tutorial set. Images can be accessed using this app from various sources. Images stored in a tablet can be opened. Users can also import images from Facebook and Google searches easily into this app. Adobe’s Creative Cloud is also a source for importing images into Photoshop Touch. As expected, pinch and zoom works smoothly for resizing images on tablet screen. Adobe has made all tools in this app intuitive and user friendly, making it ideal for web development as well.

Scribble selection tool in this app resembles Photoshop CS’s Magic wand it works with amazing accuracy. Even selecting complicated edges like human hair is not tough with this tool. Making gradients is easy with finger swipes and users can define gradient directions as well. Some users may find operating familiar Photoshop tools without a mouse a bit daunting but designers using stylus will love these. Stylus can be used with this app for making drawings with varied strokes.

With an app like Photoshop Touch and Cloud service, Adobe wants to turn tablets into content creation devices that aid designers in streamlining workflow and sharing content on the move.

There are some limitations of Photoshop Touch that designers will have to put up with. It converts any text element to vectors and so it cannot be edited as text. Photoshop Touch does not support any third party plug-in, as of now.

People may face various problems in your website due to poor internet connection, technical fault in the server or because of your own design mistakes. As a designer, your duty is to avoid these problems and retain site visitors. To help your audience, you should create a defensive website design. Here are a few things you can do:

404 Error Pages- You should design a useful error page to retain a visitor and encourage him to try again:

• Not many users understand the meaning of “404 error” and you should not use this as a headline for your error page. To make things easily understandable for your users, write something like “page not found” or “oops…you made a mistake!” in the error page title.
• Explain the reason for the error and guide the user to find the right page. For instance, you can ask him to verify the spelling of the URL or check the domain extension.
• You can use a search box in the error page and help your user find what he is looking for. For instance, a user may have clicked on a “web development” link in an article in your blog and not found it. The search box will help him find articles on the same topic on insertion of the same or related keyword (like web programming).
• You should also give an option to your viewers to report the problem. Give your contact information so that viewers can inform you about the problems they have faced.

In Line Help- When people are buying from your website, you need to assure them that they will not be cheated. When users hand over their personal data, credit card details to you, they are often skeptical and you can earn their trust with the help of “in line text”. For instance, if a user wants to know the security of your shopping cart, don’t direct him to another page. Instead, use in-line text. The in-line text is connected with an underlined text; when a user places his mouse on the underline text, the in-line text appears with a brief description of the underlined topic.

You can also offer contextual help to your users to make your site user friendly. Offer guidelines to users to help them fulfill their purpose on your site. WordPress offers this type of help in the admin area.

Make the Site Accessible to Slow Internet Connection User- Flash and jQuery can make your site amazingly attractive, but it will also increase the page load time. To maintain a defensive approach, you should design the most important parts of your website in CSS and HTML. This way, you will make sure that those with slow connection will also be able to access your site. A completely Flash-based website won’t appear in many smartphones and tablets, including iPhone and iPad. You won’t like to lose a huge customer base for the sake of video and animation.

Implement Search Option- Especially in ecommerce websites, the search bar helps users locate an article or product from a very large website. This makes sure that nobody leaves your site disappointed.

Help the User to Fill Forms- Almost every website has some kind of form, such as sign up, subscribe, etc. Wherever you use a form in your site, make it user-friendly with intelligent design. If a user misses a mandatory field, highlight that box with red color and show a text beside the box indicating what he missed. Don’t scare the user with just an error sign. Explain to him what he did wrong and guide him to do the correct thing. For instance, if his capslock is on, show a message “turn off the capslock”. Nobody likes to fill up a form twice for a small mistake they made in the last part of the form. You should store datas filled up earlier and ask users to fill only the part where they made a mistake.

Detect the Problems- Before you make the website live, check it for any mistakes or bugs. Sometimes, a broken link or missing page can destroy the site’s reputation, and to be absolutely sure about your website’s functionality, you should check it thoroughly.

These defensive designing tips will help you retain your viewers even when there is a problem with your site. Make sure whenever a user visits your site, he is satisfied with the small, yet important usability features.

You can’t find new clients if you don’t promote yourself. You have to make people hear you and hire you to stay in competition. However, self-promotion needs intelligent strategy to garner the desired result.

Every small and big company promotes their service and there is nothing bad in this. Unless you tell people about yourself and what you are offering, how will they know about you? Of course, self-promotion does not mean banging your own drum without clear focus. Nobody likes a bragger, but everyone likes to hear the achievements of a talented man.

Here are some tactful self-promotion suggestions that will help you capture the target audience’s attention.

Let Your Work Do The Talking- Before promotion, you need something that you can promote. What is the best thing that a man can promote about himself? His work or the services he provides of course.

If you have created an amazing logo design or started providing website designing at an affordable cost, people will be more interested in you.

To promote yourself, you first need to believe in yourself and the work you do. If you feel that you can design a website the way no one else can, your self confidence will boost your self-promotional skills.

Promotion Must Be Planned- Some people like to promote their work to the world as soon as they do it, while some people like to share their success with the people they trust and gradually let other people know about their achievements.

You can brag about your work if you know it’s flawless, but the wise thing to do is to give it some time. Let the small number of users try it and when you make it absolutely excellent, promote it. A good example of thoughtful promotion is Google +. Till date, Google has not made it available to everyone.

Tell People How You Can Change Their Business- When you meet a new client and want to impress him, don’t say things like, “I have 10 years experience” or “I have worked with X,Y, Z brand.”

There are several other web designers in the market who have worked more than a decade in this industry and have worked with many more brands than you ever did. Why will the customer come to you?

To interest clients, tell them how you can improve their business and earn them more profits. Claims like, “my website design will increase the conversion rate by 20% for you” will impress them. But, when you claim such things, show him data, where you helped your past clients to get more customers through your unique web design. One page statistical data is much more convincing than an hour of futile talk.

Listen More, Talk Less- This is the most subtle way of self-promotion. You may meet two clients one day. One of them is facing a problem with the contact form and another with the products page of his website. Unless you know what their problem is, you may start telling what a good webpage designer you are to the person who is looking for a great contact form!

Listen to your potential client’s problems and then offer them the solutions by saying how efficient you are in that particular field. If your expertise can solve their problem, they will be more interested to hear your ideas.

Don’t Pretend- Every web designer has his own personality and style of work. Don’t try to be someone you are not. You can’t be a jack of all trades, and acting like one is the gravest mistake you can make.

If you are good at graphic design, only promote your graphic designing skills. If you start promoting yourself as an expert in all aspects of  web development and fail to deliver, people will realize you are nothing but a liar. This will not only damage your image, but hurt your business as well. If you claim something, stick to it and satisfy the clients with your service.

Every client likes a sincere web designer who fulfills his promise. Hollow self-promotion will land you in trouble. When you promote your work, service or ideas, show people enough reasons to believe you.

HTML’s latest version, HTML5, builds on the highly successful features of HTML4. Although, currently supported by only few web browsers and is not expected to complete before 2014, HTML5 features have already gained widespread popularity. Undoubtedly, the gen-next HTML can improve website design by adding many attractive and excellent elements. Also, because HTML5 builds on HTML4, web developers need not suspend the existing markups. An improvement on the old markups will be seen to allow the new features to better website appearance and usability.

Here’s a look at what the next generation HTML has to offer:

HTML5 Features

• The doctype specification that was used by HTML4 has been simplified for HTML5. Browsers will continue to render pages in standards mode.

However, with the simplified doctype  declaration, it is now only <!DOCTYPE html> to be used in the HTML5 syntax.

•  HTML5 provides outstanding support to   audios and videos. When all browsers fully support HTML5, it will be manifolds easier to add videos and audios to websites without using outside plugins.

•  HTML5 allows simplified content editing of your website. The ‘contenteditable’ attribute allows you to easily and quickly edit/change your text. All you have to do is add ‘contenteditable=“true”’ to change any element.

• HTML5’s canvas element is good news for web designers. This feature allows you to bypass Photoshop by allowing you to directly place 2D images in the code.

• You can still navigate web applications when offline by virtue of the HTML5’s application cache feature.

How the Use HTML5 can Help Web Designers

• Because it implements WebSockets, HTML5 loads quicker than HTML4

• For mobile phone companies creating applications for mobile phones, HTML5 could be the solution to faster applications that will be accessible universally across all mobile phones.

• HTML5 makes web development faster, easier and more flexible to modifications/changes.

• With HTML5, the need for third-party software to write codes for media tools like audio, video and images, is obliterated. Media tools can now be directly written into the codes.

• The growing popularity and wide use of HTML5 is going to get better and faster with new features. It only makes sense that designers shift to this improved coding language to produce advanced websites.

• Together with CSS3, HTML5 can create designs that are smarter, more attractive, and load faster.

HTML5 can give your designing skills a serious boost. In a world where competition rules and online businesses are fighting to stay alive, a stylish website, combined with the correct SEO factors, can pull your business from the muck of competition to a place of distinction.

Today’s web development is not bound with simple information exhibition. It comes with more interactive things. Efficiency is counted here on how attractively you showcase the data in a website in a user-friendly atmosphere. Some basic web development needs bring JavaScript with more significant weight in web-design issues.

JavaScript Exhibits Maximum Information in a Region which Occupies Fewer Pixels Onscreen:

Some examples:

• News ticker
  It is a frequently used JavaScript component to show news-headlines in a nicer way. Generally it includes some arrows or scrollbar to navigate between different newsblock.
• Menus
  menus are essential most part for any website. Today nice looking user friendly menus are widely accepted everywhere.
• accordian
  This things are very commonly known as collapsed menu. It shows only one HTML block at a time and minimizes the other blocks while showing particular one block
• interactive slideshow
  These are short image galleries with some descriptions. User can navigate between two images by clicking arrows and buttons

Rich interactive Application
This kind of application works with lots of HTML form elements. Today simple HTML form, which contains traditional input box, check box, radio buttons are behind in the race of Javascript input tools

• animated Form element
  Many times normal form elements are unable to draw attention of users. A bit more crispy animation and effect will upgrade the thing to a more efficiently
• product feature compare application
  product comparison is a vital thing in many websites, where product choosing methodology is verey very significant. For example a mobile manufacturer company want to show the differences between two mobile hand set in a very catchy way by using colors animation and good tabular format. So here this application is having a good priority
• tabbed pane
  It is same as the accordion by functionality but the look and feel is some different
• map application
  Map application is a interactive tool to exhibit statistical data in a more easy to use way.

HTML5 Canvas application used for drawing application
CANVAS tag is the next generation online-dynamic-graphics building platform. It doesn’t need any third party plugin like Flash and it is equally powerful to draw graphics on the screen. User can draw something on it and in future it will acquire more popularity in online product-designing apps.

• AJAX is a robust tool to work with with-out-refresh data transfer technology. It creates more new scope to work on.
  Ajax mainly used where we need to load a set of data and we don’t want to refresh the page at all. Page will remain as it was but data will keep updated after some time or after some event.
• Non-flash animated website for apple products
  IPAD IPHONE allows only javascript

The Internet is a powerful medium to advertise and promote your business and sell products and services. Every day, more than 85% of Internet users scour the search engines to find businesses like yours, and unless your website features prominently in major players like Google, Yahoo and MSN, you will lose potential customers to competitors.  Fortunately however, obtaining a prominent listing in the search engines is possible, as is getting top rankings through white-collar SEO practices.
In your endeavor to achieve virtual excellence, there are a number of other factors that can help your online business weave new stories of success. Several marketing techniques that you employ can help close the distance between you and the consumers. A good website design is one of the main determinants of success of an online business just launched. Mentioned below are a few design strategies that can help your business tap targeted traffic and increase revenue generation:
Website Design
A website is a collection of web pages populated with text, images, audio, and video content that best describe a business, company or product. The primary aim of a website is to carry information, news and views to a wide audience, preferably a targeted group of people exclusively interested in receiving information about a particular company, business or product.
Some of the obvious advantages of having a website is its ability to reach people across geographical boundaries. The global market is enormous and websites primarily help businesses reach its rich bank of consumers through the web. Furthermore, as a marketing technique, it lets your business stay in touch with its customers around the clock.
Your website is the virtual face of your business. Hence, not only should your website be visually appealing, but also be able to clearly promote your company or products to its customers. A well-designed website is the foundation stone for business expansion in the web market. Hence, aesthetics, intelligent concepts, and an user-friendly interface are prime imperatives to follow for quality website designing.

Sales Page Designing
A sales page, quite simply, is a web page that is written like an advertisement for your product. Sales pages usually urge

Image Credit - big-images.com

positive customer action, i.e by including a ‘buy now’ or ‘visit now’ button, it asks customers to buy the company’s products, fill in surveys, etc.
Most product based websites include sales pages to exclusively market their products. Sales page designs should be a reflection of your website so far as the color scheme and layout is concerned. It should be captivating, well written and include images and audio or video in controlled frequency that will help advertise your product without overdoing the sales pitch, or delaying page load time.
A good sales page design follows the basics rules of website designing:

• Attractive, but not too flashy
• Simple without being sketchy
• A business relevant theme
• Includes a logo, product image; known aspects of your company/business/product
• Strategically placed content, images, audio, video, ‘buy now’ button, etc.

Email Marketing Design
Emails are online pamphlets that talk about your business, which you can send out to your prospective customers or dedicated buyers. Spam is universally hated and while conducting email marketing campaigns, your emails run the risk of negative association. While you may want to continue association with an existing customer base, or build new contacts with targeted prospects, it is important that you conduct email marketing right.
Newsletters can be sent out either in plain text or in html format. Plain text formats are usually safe; they take up low bandwidth and there is the assurance that all recipients will be able to read it. Html formats on the contrary, while they are more attractive, may or may not load as desired due to a recipient’s email or computer configurations.
However, if you are sending out html newsletters, one of the main imperatives to conducting a successful newsletter campaign is the email design. Your newsletter design should be along the lines of your website design: color schemes, layout and images included should be in close keeping with your website’s same. Additionally, always remember to include a ‘un-subscribe’ link or button at the bottom of your newsletters, should your once dedicated customers decide to quit correspondence.

Banner Design
Banners bearing your company logo, motto or product ads are excellent ways to advertise your business on other relevant sites. Needless to mention, your banner’s design should follow along the lines of your website design. Note however, since banners are not direct extensions of your website like a sales page or newsletter, you may exercise creative liberties and come up with fresh color schemes that will make your business stand out among its competitors on other sites. Alternatively, you can play with color shades to make your banner similar, yet exclusive of your site’s design.
Whatever you choose, remember to make your banners attractive and appealing. Avoid overcrowding with too many images or text, or their combination. Usually, banners with creative images and witty texts have a better visitor click-rate than those without.

Social Media
Social media advertising is one sales technique that rarely fails. If you have managed to find a slot for your business in social sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc, rest assured to see an increased traffic flow to your website. Social media helps you connect to your target audience effectively. Developing Facebook applications that will promote your business or placing ads on relevant pages, ensures a better visitor click-rate.
Banner advertising is a fantastic way to get your business noticed on social networks. If you are developing an application, remember to use interesting graphics and texts that have parity with your website.
To conclude, the Internet is a powerful and effective medium to promote your company and products. Where a quality website design helps is gain prominence among millions of similar business websites across the web. Of course, several search engine marketing factors come into play in your run for good rankings. However, where good website designing helps is retaining your visitors long enough to convert them into your customers.

With the advent of new cutting edge technologies, the industry of web has gone for a massive change in the last few years. As professionals, there’s no denying that you need to stay focused and updated about the latest trends. But despite the dynamic changes, there are certain aspects that stay constant and evergreen for years to come. Here we will be discussing about the four constants that have been in the industry for long and is expected to stay stable in the coming years also:

1. People Skills

Instead of vocal communication, modern day interaction is mainly dependant on online chats and forums. Being a website designer, you need to maintain a strong platform of conversation with your clients, either through phone calls or online calls. The success of any project largely depends on the ability to interact with your client. Make him feel important by communicating about things such as design decisions, customer experience, technical implementations etc, so that he relates to the project well. Building a long term relationship with your clients is a must need that helps in making it big in today’s world of competition.

2. Reliability

Winning client’s trust makes one of the most important needs that can help you enjoy repeat customer visit. Building a professional reputation along with reliability and stability makes some of the most needed aspects that pave the platform for repeat customer visit for a second or third project. Maintain to follow the following guidelines to make yourself dependable and trustworthy to your clients:

• Always try to finish a project within its scheduled timeframe. Never miss deadlines after committing to clients.
• Always be accessible for your clients. Let them know about the updates and process at regular intervals. Ignoring them or failure to communicate is a big no-no when dealing with clients.
• Be consistent about your quality of work as customers stay loyal to brands that produce quality solutions.

3. Experience
It’s truly said that ‘Experience speaks volumes’. To make a mark in the industry of web, you need something more than just hard work to convince clients about your ability. Experience is a powerful asset that makes you considered among the league of professionals who are confident and capable of handling any situation that crops up.

4. Change

Last but not the least, the forth aspect that stays constant in web industry is ‘change’. A designer needs to stay in sync with the constant changing technologies, trends, styles and business models of website designing to be able to provide the best to clients.

Using ‘Mega menus’ make the latest trend in website design industry that has been embraced gracefully by business companies to exhibit their products and services to potential customers. Easy to navigate, the concept of mega menu has improved the usability feature of a drop down menu that helps visitors to enjoy smooth access.

Mostly used in e-commerce websites, mega menu emerges as a popular tool not only for designers but also among visitors. Just a few clicks and visitors get to know about a wide variety of products all at once. Read below to know more about mega menu and some of its excellent usages in website design:

Mega menu: Being ‘BIG’ is the prominence of a mega drop down menu that allows smooth and easy navigational access to visitors. An instant hit among e shopping sites, mega drop down menu helps exhibit all products and services instantly to audience.

Features of Mega Menu: Surely a trend that is here to stay, mega menu rules the web design industry with its no-coding feature. Added to it, this tool displays many more benefits that are appreciated by designers and visitors likewise. Here we bring for you some of the prominent features that add to its reasons of popularity:

• Mega menu is a single floating drop down menu
• It allows display of all options in one single panel
• Easy to use, mega menu faces few problems
• Allows designers to let free of their creativity
• Mega menu uses group option to categorize products accordingly
• It uses graphics or icons to make it easily understandable to visitors

Mega Menu Examples: Get Inspired

With easy navigational facility, big drop down menu allows companies to exhibit all that has in offer to its potential customers. Have a look through the designs given below and experience how mega menu helps to reach out to targeted audience easily and effectively:

1. Little Kids Bedrooms

2. OfficeMax

3. Asos