Designing is a news website is a lot more difficult than any other type of website. Homepage of a news website is the most important page because the important news headlines are displayed on this page. Controlling the amount of content in homepage is a challenging task. Web designers try rigorously to keep the homepage clean, but unfortunately, so many things happen in a day that the homepage gets cluttered.

So, how do the web designers of BBC and CNN handle so many news articles everyday and still keep the layout tidy? Here are some news website design guidelines for you.

• Working with the Headers- Header is the most important part of a news website. It helps people check the latest headlines and they can also navigate the sub pages from the header area. Some sites use a dropdown menu to organize the content in “political news”, “foreign news”, “sports news” section, but a drop down menu can confuse the readers as well. You should give a better option to the readers so that the can scan through different stories comfortably.

Instead of designing a drop down menu, give tabs and horizontal links for navigation purpose. You should also embed a search tool and place your logo near the header area. Link the header with your homepage to give your readers a one click access to the major news articles.

• Working with Featured Stories- Some of your readers may not know which news is important and your dynamic website design must help them identify the important stories. You should use bold headlines and large images to highlight the featured stories. However, if possible, then instead of highlighting multiple feature stories, you should give importance to the latest and most important news.
• Working with Three Column Layout- News channels often design three column layouts as it allows them insert more content in each page. However, web users generally ignore the third column. Over the years, readers have seen that websites use the third column for ads and if you place any important news in the third column, they may overlook it. If you want to design a three column layout, then offer something really interesting in the third column to capture your readers’ attention.

Designing a two column layout is a more intelligent idea. It helps you give enough white space in between lines and you can also organize the content in a systematic way. Readers also like two column layouts because they can scan the website lot faster.

When clients hire website designer, they ask him to cram everything on the homepage. Unfortunately, site owners don’t realize that too much content can hamper usability. If your client pressurizes you to design a congested news site, tell him that readers love information rich but usable sites.

A mood board looks like a poster and it contains graphics, text and sample objects. Mood boarding helps designers develop unique design concepts and communicate the same with other team members. If you are a web designer, you can use a mood board, created manually or digitally, to express your web design concepts and show people what you want to achieve.

Why and Where?

When you work in a web designing company, you have to handle multiple projects simultaneously, and every project has a deadline. Mood boarding saves you time and allows you solve some of the problems that designers normally face during a project. For instance, demands for change in layout or color when the site is half complete.

Deciding the aesthetic flow of a site is challenging. However, using a mood board, you can plan the layout and identify the essential elements of a site, then submit it to your client for his feedback. If he likes the concept, you can start work, or keep modifying until you get the go-ahead.

You can also prove your expertise through mood boarding. Most clients are not familiar with web trends and explaining a point to them can be difficult. Showing images and color combinations on the mood board can help you explain your points easily, and be easier for your client to comprehend the plan for his website.

Elements

Decide the necessary elements of a project and start including them in the mood board. You should be able to project a glimpse of the final design. Use of catchy lines can assist you convey your design concept to the client.

Mood boarding can be executed both, on paper and on the computer. If you are more comfortable with a digital format and your web design company follows a “go green” policy, use applications like Sampleboard, Evernote or Polvore to design a useful mood board.

Graphic designing is a vast field and a professional designer should be well aware of all the important aspects of graphic design.

Graphic designers are not only brilliant artists; they are technically sound people as well. In this field, art and technology walk hand in hand and a seasoned designer knows how to maintain a balance between designing ideas and technical nitty-gritty.

When people see a logo and an icon, they often get confused and think that there is no difference between these two items. Though both these elements are essential for corporate identity design and they look alike, there is a lot of difference between a logo and an icon.

What is an Icon? - An icon is a graphic symbol that shows a direct concept, idea or operation. There is no hidden message in an icon. Icons are used for navigation and content sharing purpose in websites and simplify a complicated action. For instance, a magnifying glass icon tells the viewer that it should be used for search purpose.

What is a Logo? – Logo is also a graphic symbol that connects an original idea with the symbol and gives either a direct or hidden message. It can contain both symbol and fonts to highlight the brand identity of a company. A logo relays the brand message of a company, add value to their products/services and help people connect with that brand. For instance, the Apple logo has no direct meaning like a magnifying glass icon, but apple is the fruit of knowledge and the logo relays a message of “constant innovation” to the viewers.

Technical Difference between a Logo and a Symbol- Some people may say that logo based icons look exactly the same, then what makes them different? The technical aspects of logo and icon separate these two important corporate identity symbols.

• A logo is easily scalable. You can use it in websites, brochures, business cards, billboard ads and in many more places. On the contrary, an icon is designed in either a 16×16 pixel or 256×256 pixel format. If you resize an icon, it will look blurry. Therefore, you have to create an icon in multiple dimensions for different purposes.

• Most of the times, icons are shaped as squares, but a logo has no shape boundaries. As long as the logo looks beautiful and meaningful, you can give it any shape you wish to.

After reading the aforementioned points, you must have realized the conceptual and technical differences between a logo design and an icon.

Web programming is a very complicated subject and it takes years to learn different programming techniques. Unlike web designing, there is no “10 things you need to know about programming.” There are just so many different programming languages and each of them has its own code writing principles.

You must have patience to learn different web programming languages and practice rigorously to improve your coding skills.

Programming is like mathematics and it’s based on logic. For example, when a web user inserts wrong data in a web form, the form informs him about the error. A common man overlooks this small function, but as a programmer, you should be inquisitive and try and find out how a form identifies wrong data.

Here are some guidelines that will help you improve your programming logic.

1. Learn “C” Language- Some programmers may not like this suggestion. Web programmers mainly use Java, .NET and PHP programming for web development, then why am I recommending C?C is a powerful programming language, but more importantly, it has an organized structure. C allows you to experiment directly with computer memory and helps you understand how data moves forward from once block to another. If you have any doubts about data processing system of programming languages, then C will clear all your doubts.
2. Develop Programs that Improve Your Logic- Try to write simple, but logical programs in C to test your programming skills. Obviously, you will make mistakes at the beginning, but your mistakes and failures will help you find new solutions.
3. Find Interesting Codes and Try to Understand the Logic Behind It- You have probably come across cool effects and features in websites while surfing the net. Find the source code behind those effects and understand how it was created. Once you understand the coding logic, try to modify it by adding custom functions.
4. Solve Logic Puzzles- Every standard newspaper publishes logic puzzles everyday. Try solving them regularly and train your brain to think differently. When working in a web development company, you have to face different programming challenges everyday. Sharpen your thinking capabilities and use your problem solving skills in web programming.
5. Help Other People and Learn from Them- Every newbie programmer should join a website programming forum and share his knowledge with others. Read the programming challenges other developers are facing and try to provide them a solution. If you are facing any problem, then share it with other members and take their help. This problem sharing habit will help you learn new programming secrets and easier ways to solve critical programming challenges.

Whether you are a newbie programmer or an experienced developer, you should always try to increase your knowledge. Web programming is like a riddle and solving it gives you immense satisfaction.

When companies think about developing a website, they consider various aspects of web development, such as design, website programming, hosting, maintenance etc. and look for a value-for-money solution. Deciding the layout design and finding a hosting service provider is not that tough, but what about programming language? Which language is perfect for any small or large web project?

Though there are several popular web programming languages available in the market, PHP is the ideal choice for any web development project. It is flexible, developer- friendly and resourceful. Most importantly, with the help of PHP programming, you can design a user-friendly website or application and serve your customers efficiently.

PHP is an open-source, free, server-side scripting language. The coding pattern is easily understandable and it works on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, Linux and Unix.

PHP has grown exponentially in the past few years and has made a web developer’s job simpler. For instance, you can now develop large and small websites, CRM solutions, e-commerce shopping carts, informative forums, chatting platforms, community websites etc. with the help of PHP. A dynamic website refreshes its web pages automatically and offers updated content. Using this language, you can develop a dynamic business website comfortably.

PHP data management system is also pretty simple. Web programmers can easily store data, create cookies and calculate the number of viewers by cookies and sessions. PHP has its own memory and stores important data in it, reducing pressure on servers and increases processing speed.

PHP can run multimedia files quite easily as well.Code is executed by the server and therefore, it does not require any additional plug-in support for multimedia files. If you want to develop a PHP application, use a popular framework like, CodeIgniter, Zend to reduce work pressure.

Every company has a fixed budget for their corporate web project and if you don’t have thousands of dollars, then PHP is your ‘knight in shining armor’. It has all the features you need, with the none of the cost you’d want to bear. Even associated necessary software like MySQL, Text Editors and Apache Server are completely free. It gives you the same output for any paid web programming language, but saves your web development costs.

Let me ask you a simple question – which is the world’s second largest search engine? Yahoo, Bing or YouTube? Most people will guess the answer is Yahoo, but its not! YouTube is currently world’s second largest search engine.

If you run a SEO services company India, then concentrate on YouTube search engine optimization techniques and offer your clients better SEO solutions. Since YouTube is a video hosting website, most people overlook its importance. Everyday millions of web users search YouTube to find video content. YouTube users are more qualified web users than standard search engine users. They consume content in form of video and spend more time on YouTube result pages than a web user normally spends on Google SERP.

A few years ago, if you uploaded a video with proper keywords in the title, you could easily get a top-ten ranking. However, these days, thousands of videos on the same topic are uploaded everyday and you must follow proper SEO techniques to rank high in YouTube result pages.

Optimizing a YouTube video is not that difficult. Reputed SEO services India companies follow several simple yet effective methods to optimize YouTube video files. If you are not aware of those techniques, then start reading the points mentioned below.

1. Closed Captions-While watching a YouTube video, have you noticed the “CC” button at the right bottom corner? CC stands for Closed Captions. YouTube crawls the content of CC to understand the topic of your video and determines its rank in the search result pages.Earlier, the closed captions adding process was very difficult. You had to specify beginning and end of each line and it was a time consuming process. However, YouTube recently introduced a new technology called “speech recognition”. It automatically detects start and end of each line and matches it with the audio in your video file. If your video contains CC, then it will easily outrank the videos that don’t contain any CC.
2. Add Script in Description- Since, you have already created captions for your video file; add the same text file in description. Google gives importance to the description of video files.
3. Name the Video File with Keywords- Viewers may not give much importance to the title of your video, but YouTube pays attention to every video title and gives them points on the basis of relevancy. Therefore, give your video file a suitable name and insert keywords in it. For instance, if you are uploading a video on benefits of LCD monitor, then name it as “LCD Monitor Benefits.avi”, not “video123.avi”.
4. Create an Engaging Video-What if you create a boring video, but give flawless caption and important keywords? It should rank high in search results, right? Sorry to disappoint you, but YouTube gives high importance to viewership and if your video is not liked by the viewers, then it won’t get top position in search results.Therefore, create engaging videos to retain viewers’ attention. When viewers watch your video till the end, YouTube realizes its importance and gives it good rank in SERPs.
5. Select YouTube Channels Carefully- This video optimization rule is similar to website SEO. If you post a video in a not so famous YouTube channel, it won’t improve your search engine ranking, but if you post the same video in a popular YouTube channel, then it will get immediate attention from viewers and YouTube. When subscribers of a popular channel like and share your video, it quickly claims top spot in SERPs.
6. Post HD Videos- HD videos always get better rank than SD videos. YouTubbe thinks that if you are investing your time and money to create a HD video, then the content must be very important. Therefore, you should upload 720p or 1080p videos for effective product/service promotion.

Following these YouTube SEO techniques, a good SEO services companycan improve their clients’ search engine raking.

An ideal design blog should be beautiful and informative. Designers are creative people and web users expect to see a mesmerizing design from them. However, only beautiful layout and quality content cannot make a blog popular. A blog owner should customize his site and promote it in social media platforms to increase readership.

If you want to develop a blog, then here are some blog customization guidelines for you.

1. Post High Quality Content- A first time viewer may give importance to design, but a regular visitor gives more importance to content. Web users read blogs to enhance their knowledge and you should post high-quality articles to keep your readers satisfied. Select the topics related to design and make sure your articles are genuine.
2. Use high resolution images- Images help you relay a message more effectively than text content. Hence, you should include images in your articles to explain your points better. You can either draw some images or use stock photos to suit your purpose.
3. Extend Your Online Network- If you don’t have enough money for marketing, add other famous bloggers to your friend list to increase readership. When you refer to reputed website design India blogs from your friend list, some of these blogs will also reciprocate by adding you to their friend list. Following this strategy, you can redirect their readers to your blog.
4. Have Organized Categories- Create article categories and refer to related articles under each category to help readers find important articles easily. For instance, you can create “logo design”, “Flash design” and “graphic design” categories to organize articles on respective topics in your blog.
5. Show Recent Items- Show the “recent posts” in the right sidebar area. This will help readers understand that your blog is active. You can also show “recent comments” in the right sidebar to increase reader-writer interaction.
6. Design Customized Icons- Your blog must contain icons such as Faceboook, Twitter and RSS feed. Customize the icons to match them perfectly with the site background, for instance, if you are using grunge texture for layout design, give the icons the same look as well.
7. Place a Search Bar- Install a search tool in your site, so that the readers can type design related keywords and find articles immediately.
8. Design a Brief “About” Page- Design a beautiful “about” page and introduce yourself to the readers. Some of your readers can be your future clients as well. Provide your educational and professional background in the about page to attract more clients.
9. Place Ads Properly- Some bloggers earn huge amounts of money from blog advertisements. If you want to post ads in your blog, then place them carefully. Use either the left or right sidebar area for advertisements to give your blog a clean look.
10. Have a Contact Page- Some of your readers may want to offer you designing projects. For their benefit, you should design a “contact” page with your contact details.

Following these blog designing and customization guidelines, you can develop a user- friendly blog. However, if images and text is not good enough for you, you can also add some dynamic website designelements like Flash video and audio in your blog to set it apart from the rest.

Logos convey more than just your company name. This truth is known by every business owner today. However, the way your company logo conveys your brand identity depends a good deal on your designer’s personal selection and design decision.

Designers have a number of critical factors to make up their mind about and in this post, I would talk about some common logo designing styles and help you make the decision as to what style of a logo would be ideal for your business.

There would be various elements that you need to take into consideration such as whether your business message can be conveyed via a symbol-based or a text logo. Below are the different types of  designs that I have described for you. You can choose any of these depending on your company, your products and services and an array of other factors.

• Type-based: This is one of the commonest designing varieties out there. Text-based and type-based logos contain the company name in an artistically designed form and create an impression of the company’s name within a short time on the minds of consumers.
• Symbol-centric: Symbols can be anything – from a figure to a pictogram and they can easily penetrate the psyche of onlookers, which means if you want your target audience to register you company’s name within a short time, you can use symbols. Symbols are also good for presenting your brand identity in a nutshell.
• Abstract: This type of design is a little ‘out of the box’ but sometimes it is the best way to describe your business to consumers. Abstract logos can be tricky because, if not executed properly, they can do more harm than good. It can fail to create an impression or worse, it can create a wrong impression altogether about your company among consumers. So, be careful when you entrust a logo design company for designing an abstract logo for your business.
• Initials-based: Sometimes, you do not need to tell the full name of your company. Sometimes, initials are enough. A single letter logo can be great to express your brand identity and so can a combination of a few letters. Do a little research to find out whether it would be right to present your company name through initials or an acronym.
• Badge-like: Generally, these types of identity are used by automobile companies. Look around the city roads, and you will realize that almost every car company uses an emblem or badge as their unique identity. Even sports associations and clubs use such logos. Would a badge-like logo suit your business? What does your instinct tell you?
• Mascot: A mascot or cartoon character can be anything from an animal to a human figure. They are used by both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. See if a mascot would be able to represent your company to your target audience. You need to do a little bit of homework for this.

Conclusion

When it comes to logo design , India is preferred choice for many companies. They say Indian companies can produce highly customized logos within your budget. Shop around well before you choose the graphic design company that will be taking care of your identity design. It is your corporate identity that we are talking about. You cannot afford to make a hasty decision. Do the required research. All the best.

Do not hesitate to share your experience!

SEO experts often feel neglected in a large IT firm. Companies give importance to the business managers and developers, but when they talk about the SEO personnel in the team, its like- “God knows what they do throughout the day!”

A Word to the SEO Expert

If you work in a SEO services company India and think that you are not getting the respect and value you deserve, here are few things you can do.

Prove Your Value by Reporting- Companies hire a expert to rank high in search engine results. A SEO genius actually increases the company’s profit margin by driving online traffic towards his company’s site, but only a handful of people accept this fact. So, how can you measure your effectiveness and get other employees’ respect?

After spending a few months in the SEO services company, you will get a clear idea about their work process. Find out how your employer measures cost-per-order (CPO), cost-per-acquisition (CPA), cost-per-lead (CPL) and lifetime value of a client (LTV). Once you know the metric of conversion measurement, start including it in your report every week to prove your worth.

Win Small Projects and Influence People- When a large overseas company hires you for their projects, don’t get intimated. If you find that the company is following a wrong Search Engine Optimization strategy for years, tell them that they are walking down the wrong path.

The company may not agree with your suggestion. In that case, take a small project, use your techniques and prove your point. An arrogant boss may not like suggestions, but he has to accept the performance data.

Offer Help in the Recruitment Process- A HR professional scans dozens of resumes everyday and hires the most eligible candidates. However, the HR personnel can’t be a jack of all trades. Therefore, you can offer your help to him in the recruitment process. Shortlist the really good Search Engine Optimization experts and ask the HR manager to hire them. When you help the company build a strong SEO team, the management realizes your value.

A Word to the Boss

If you are running an IT company and think these professionals are the least important part of your team, here is an eye opener for you.
They Can Lead - An expert in this field can guide your company’s marketing strategy and help you attract new clients. For instance, if you want to launch an online marketing campaign using a Flash banner, these professional can suggest important keywords for an attractive catch-phrase that will increase conversion rate.

Bring IT and Marketing Closer - IT and marketing teams are generally always caught arguing with conflicting ideas. One aims to provide quality services, the other aims to market that fashionably. IT’s complain has always been marketing professionals not understanding technical aspects, and the marketing’s, IT not understanding the value of packaging services that will sell.

An expert’s job is part marketing and part technical. He understands the difficulties of both these teams and can work as a bridge between marketing and IT.

True value of a SEO expert can never be measured accurately. Companies reap the benefits of their hardwork, but don’t understand their work procedure. Adding links and submitting articles to an article directory may seem nothing to untrained eyes, but a SEO expert can do magic with his search engine optimization techniques.

If you want to hire a serach engine optimization professional and improve your site’s search engine ranking, contact a SEO services India company for quality services at economical rates.

If you have launched shopping cart solutions recently, you may be trying desperately to enhance its conversion rates. Have you considered the idea of incorporating product videos in corporate identity design of your e commerce site? If not, consider this statistic-CBS Interactive Business Network states that websites that feature product videos have 30% higher conversion rate, as compared to websites that avoid using videos.

This report might have made you wonder about the reasons behind popularity of product videos amongst e commerce owners and consumers. Today, in this post, we will discuss the reasons that play an important factor in enhancing popularity of product videos.

Interpreting Video Requires Limited Effort

As compared to reading, watching a video takes less time and effort. This means that incorporating a video in your website will allow you to target people who are busy or do not want to invest effort in acquiring information.

In brief, delivering and digesting information via videos are easier, as compared to acquiring information via written content. For best results, keep your videos short and informative, while implementing shopping cart development.

It Adds a Personal Touch

Many people find chunks of text boring. They would rather prefer to watch a video that has a personal appeal and explains things more clearly. Herein lies one of the main advantages of product videos-they can provide a company with a humane appeal, thus allowing customers to understand in-depth about different aspects of the company.

If you want to add a unique appeal to the videos, you can offer your customers a sneak peek to your office. Alternatively, you can offer them a glimpse of different processes involved in developing your product or services.

Video Sharing is More Popular

As compared to articles, people are more interested in sharing videos. This is because sharing videos is fun (because of the interactive element). Also, watching videos take limited time. Therefore, people are more confident that their friends and family would also watch the shared content. This also motivates them to share the product video.

Acquiring High SEO Rankings is Easier with Videos

Studies reveal that currently, Google considers quality of videos, along with that of images and content to determine rank of a website. This means that if you optimize the product videos correctly, they would help you to rank higher in Google.

To stay on the safe side, you can opt for two strategies-

1. Post your videos in YouTube. Since Goggle owns YouTube, it assigns greater importance to videos posted in YouTube. Of course, the quality needs to be high.
2. Incorporate relevant keywords in the description, filename, tags, and title.

Video Offers Realistic View of Products

Product video is also popular because of the fact that it provides customers with a realistic view of the products. The experience is almost similar to observing products in real life. Incorporating a video, therefore, makes it easier for a customer to decide whether to buy the product or not.

We hope that this article helped you to understand the reasons behind popularity of product videos.

It’s great to have a design business of your own. Tasks like corporate identity design have a charm that’s hard to resist for a creative professional. However, a business, no matter how small or big, requires more than just skills. You need to take up challenges and deal with a variety of problems from time to time. This post is dedicated to provide you with some suggestions on how you can stay focused on your designs even with all the aforementioned distractions.

• Offer a reasonable rate: It’s nice to submit a low quote, especially if you have just started your graphic design business. But see to it that you don’t quote such a low amount that you can hardly pay your bills, let alone making profits. You need to do a little bit of research. Look around, see what other designers are quoting and compare that with your rates.

• Be clear to your clients: Do not have any hidden charges. When a client approaches you with a brochure designing project, arrange a meeting with him. See what his project is like, tell him what you will need for the project and discuss the deadline. Make yourself as clear to him as possible.

• Ensure that you are getting paid for all your projects: Always get a down payment for any and every project. You can ask for 50% of the project fee as the down payment. That’s what is usually done by most independent professionals as well as companies.

• Be friendly, but be professional: To stay in business, you have to be friendly and maintain a cordial relationship with everyone associated with you. However, you have to be professional as well. Be polite and be there for your clients when they need you, but do not forget that it is a commercial relationship and you have to be professional.

• Always take a backup of your work: This is very important. You never know when a problem with your computer may arise. For every project, backup your designs in a different CD or DVD.  This would help you to use those design files in the future if you need them.

• Organize yourself: Use tools and resources that can help you be more organized. When you are  organized, you will realize that things are getting done more easily and you are being able to manage your projects more efficiently. Besides, if you are working in a neat and clean environment, you are bound to be more productive.

• Market yourself: This is the age of constant marketing. Remember that you always have to be in the limelight. Promote your business online as well as offline continuously.

• Keep yourself updated: From time to time, you need to refresh your knowledge base and sharpen your skill-set. Follow relevant design blogs where expert professionals talk about corporate identity design, brochure design, graphic design etc. Sign-up for newsletters, get tips from the masters and do whatever you think is helpful to stay updated.

• Grow your network: Options for networking are everywhere. Make use of them. Be a regular on social media and join relevant design communities. You can get more business opportunities and even outsource your work to some of these community members when you need to.

Finally, you need to love what you do and avoid stress. Keep a positive mindset and don’t forget to share your thoughts with us.

If you think thieves only exist in the real world and not in the virtual world, think again! WebGuru India has, for the umpteenth time, been robbed of their site’s content, this time, their design as well!

You hire a website designer and spend thousands of dollars for that perfect web design, thinking you have created a unique, customized design for your service. However, there are competitor companies that wait to steal your design concepts and copy the functionalities of your site to make their own site popular.

Besides website layout, some companies will also copy your content, including domain name, making small changes in your custom design to start using it as their own. It’s tough to prove that your web content or design has been copied, but in truth, anyone can identify a duplicate website design or content when they see it.

What do you do in such a case?

It suffices to say that as site owners, it’s our responsibility to retain the uniqueness of our website layout and stop web designing thefts. Here’s what WebGuru did, and what you can do if you face the same problem like our’s:

Send a Complaint Letter- If you find someone has copied your custom website design, send a complaint letter to the site owner. Be polite but firmly inform him about the design and content similarities and request him to modify his site’s design.

If similarities are coincidental (only in case you have used a design template to customize for your website), here’s hoping the site owner will modify his layout.

Contact the Hosting and Domain Provider- Find out the domain and hosting service provider of that identical site and notify them about the incident. Reputed hosting service providers don’t support malicious activities and can ban guilty websites on your behalf.

Contact Duplicate Website’s Advertisers- Advertisers don’t want to associate with a company that copies other companies’ brand identity. Contact advertisers of the duplicate website and inform them of the theft. No website can run without advertisements and this strategy will compel duplicate site owners to change their designs.

Contact Google for Banning the Duplicate Website- Every website owner is afraid of Google penalties. You should immediately submit a complaint against the site to Google and provide enough proof to justify your accusation.

Take Legal Action- If your dynamic website design is copyright protected, send a legal notice to the copycats. Hire a lawyer to handle the situation properly. However, if the guilty party has not copied your entire layout, you can’t charge them for copyright infringement. Hence, consult your lawyer for professional guidance.

Following the aforementioned steps, you can stop online thieves from stealing your website design. We are trying to…

Designing an interesting coming soon page is good for website designers, as by doing that, they will be able to create an identity of their own as well as carve a niche for themselves. A website could open new avenues for getting more projects, getting better exposure, securing fatter paychecks and not to mention gaining popularity in the web industry. And a nice ‘coming soon’ page is like the trailor of a good movie. Viewers look forward to what you have to offer.

If you are in the field of website designing and want to be become a popular web designer, why not design a coming soon page for your website first? Below are a few tips for you:

• Show what Your Objective is. Let them Know what You are Going to Come Up With: Chalk out a plan as to what your website is going to be like and tell people about it through attractive visuals and engaging text.

• Have Sign-Up Forms through Which People can Get Email Notification: without a sign up form, a coming soon page has no point. A sign-up form will help those who are interested in your website to keep track of when it is coming up. It will help you to already have a visitor base ready as soon as you launch your site.

• Offer Something to the People Who are Signing Up: It could be goodies or special discount on a project. Send them email notifications when they sign up and offer it when your site launches.

• Create A Unique Design that will Stand Out: Offer something special for your visitors. Give them something to look forward to. You don’t want your design to look like it has been copied from someone else’s. Make something that will really be different from the crowd.

• Exploit the Power of Social Media: You must have a facebook and twitter profile. Now it’s time to make use of them for your business. Start talking about your website’s launch in all your social networks. Let people know what you will be offering there. If possible, make a video and share it with your networks so that you can get a lot of visitors even before your website launches and build an anticipation about your upcoming endeavor.

• Use Animation: Take the help of Flash website design to create animation and put it on your coming soon page so as to attract and engage the attention of your prospective clients. Flash is a very good option when it comes to creating animations.

• Infuse A Little Mystery: Don’t show all your cards in the beginning. Create a mystery around your website and let people guess. You have to do it carefully, so that your visitors do not feel disinterested. Create a mysterious design that will make them curious about what it is that you will be coming up with.

Conclusion

You now know how to charm your target audience and have them waiting for your website’s launch with an appealing ‘coming soon’ page. Whether you are a freelancer or an entrepreneur who wants to open a website design company of his own, these ideas will definitely be of help.

An informative brochure acts as a powerful marketing tool, creates awareness about the company and encourages visitors to inquire about it. Creating a corporate brochure design, however, is not an easy task. You have to determine functions of your brochure and research about preferences of your target audience beforehand.

Additionally, you have to find out whether creating a single brochure is sufficient or you need to create multiple ones. In general, the planning stage is equivalent to the execution stage in terms of importance.

In this article, we will focus on the planning stage. More specifically, we will discuss the issues you need to consider at the planning stage for creating a powerful brochure design.

Find Out Whether You Need Single or Multiple Brochures

Some companies develop different brochures for different mediums (web or print). Others, on the other hand, stick to creating a single brochure(irrespective of the medium). If you are planning to market a single brochure for different mediums, modifying your strategies accordingly is critical. We will explain how can you modify your techniques.

Let us assume that you have sent an email marketing letter to prospective clients highlighting the reasons for buying your product. This means that now you cannot not send them a brochure that repeats the same information. Rather, you need to focus on creating a brochure that discusses features of your products. Remember that sending the same content to clients will not yield any effective result.

Decide About Function of Your Brochure

Typically, brochures are created for fulfilling one or all of the following functions.

• To create awareness about a product/company. This type of brochure is usually meant for people who are not yet familiar with the company.

• To encourage sales. The target audience for this type of brochure consists of people who are already aware of the company.

• To answer queries. People may have certain questions about a company. This type of brochure answers these queries.

Determining function of your brochure beforehand will help you to prepare its content and designs accordingly.

Research About Your Audience

Researching about preferences of your target audience is important. The reason is that such a strategy will help you to create a brochure that fulfills requirement of your target audience. Remember that a brochure that targets people already familiar with the company should be different from a brochure that wants to create awareness about a newly launched company.

Prepare Your Selling Points

Once you are done with these above-mentioned steps, move on to preparing your selling points. However, avoid bragging about your products/services and repeating the same information. Rather, point out their features and discuss how they would benefit your target audience. While preparing the selling points, refer to the information you have collected, while researching about preferences of your target audience.

This step marks end of the planning stage of brochure designing. Now, you can move on to the execution stage. Consider preferences of your audience while creating the brochure and come up with content and designs that fulfill their requirements.

With the latest Panda update (Panda 3.3), Google has clearly decided to draw the line between “SEO friendly” content and “over optimized” content. According to Matt Cutts, head of Google’s search spam team, Panda 3.3 is aimed at making the internet a fair arena for marketing.

Fair enough…but does that mean websites will now get what they deserve?

Possibly. According to Cutts, as opposed to websites who are “overly doing their SEO”, websites who create user-friendly, information-rich content will now be given preference.

Let’s take a look…

Content

There are several good websites ranking poorly in SERPs, while their weaker contemporaries with “keyword rich content” continue to occupy the top slots. However, thanks to Panda 3.3, Google will now pay more attention to “relevant” content and not just “keyword rich” content. Which means, using the same keywords in an article repeatedly will get you penalized for “over optimization”, use of irrelevant keywords notwithstanding.

Quite simply, great content equals to helpful information and will result in good ranks. Weak or thin content, overuse of same keyword(s) and duplicate content will result in slide of your website rank.

In Cutts’ own words “…if you’re selecting topics based on what your audience would find helpful, you’re doing content strategy right. If you’re choosing what to write about based on the keywords you want to be found for, you don’t have the reader top of mind; and Google is doing everything they can in its algorithm not to reward such sites in the SERPs.
“Make a compelling site. Make a site that’s useful. Make a site that’s interesting. Make a site that’s relevant to people’s interests…”

If you have been booted by Panda already, start changing your content for search engines to content for readers. Include keywords only where necessary and relevant. Make sure articles are original, informative and keyword density is not more than 2-5%.

Besides content, Panda update will also make several changes to other SEO aspects, like image  optimization, link exchange, and local search results.

Image

You have to start including descriptive alt tags for images, related to its respective content. For instance, if your content is on website design , use an image alt that says ‘website design’ and not ‘graphic design’.

Of course, SEO has always stressed on relevant alt tag usage. With Panda 3.3 however, besides alt tags, image anchor texts, descriptions and file-names must clearly state the page’s content.

Local Search

For local searches, changes effective will pertain to detecting user location and displaying results accordingly. For instance, if you are a user from India searching for a web content writing company, Google will detect your location and display the results accordingly.

Furthermore, it will show results from particularly your area. So, whether or not an Indian user inputs “web content writing, (city name)” as a keyword to search his area-based companies, Panda will, by default, show him companies in his city.

Local companies are destined to reap huge benefits from Panda’s new update. As opposed to large MNCs that tend to occupy top spots in SERPs because of their impressive SEO campaigns, smaller companies can now rest easy with Google’s default search results. This means, despite the absence of targeted keywords, local companies will be first in line for promotion by Google to a user from its particular area.

Link Exchange

Panda will now map the number of links you are exchanging on your site. A large number of links in one page will be treated as link spamming. Also, every incoming and outgoing link in your site must be relevant to the content it is linked to, or be considered as link spamming.

Google however, has not revealed the number of links that can be placed in a page to avoid spamming penalty. According to Cutts, a page should avoid “way too many links” that would “go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area”.

The Panda 3.3 update is destined to create a few cracks in your website’s rank. But don’t go crazy yet. White hat SEO has grown a few notch more sophisticated. Start modifications today for a better rank tomorrow.

All the best!

Most website owners are familiar with the concept of website analytics. However, most of them use website analytics to calculate site traffic and present the figures to clients. This is because they are unaware of the multiple usage of website analytics.

Website analytics, when used correctly, can act as an online shopping solutions tracker, error checker, and even a location tracker. In this article, we will discuss the different ways you can utilize website analytics to your advantage.

Understanding the Items that People Search For

Most website owners are unaware of the importance of researching about the items that visitors are looking for. Researching about the items that people are looking for, however, is crucial for understanding whether your items are sufficient for fulfilling their requirements. In case you find that they are looking for items not included in your web design, you can redesign your site to incorporate these items.

Calculating Conversion Rate of your Website

We normally associate the term ‘conversion rate’ with e commerce solutions. However, even if you do not own an online store, you can still check your conversion rate with the help of website analytics. For example, if you own a business website, you can check the conversion rate by calculating the number of people who fill up the ‘Contact Us’ form.

Use analytics to calculate conversion rate of your website. If you have started an online store recently, you would be surprised to see how low your conversion rate is (most new online stores have 3% conversion rate). To understand behavior of visitors on your website, opt for a conversion funnel. Conversion funnel highlights the way a customer behaves, starting from clicking on your site to finally, purchasing the item.

Setting up a conversion funnel will help you to understand the factors that are preventing visitors from completing the check-out process. In case of any confusion, get in touch with a web designing company.

Understanding Geographical Location of your Visitors

With website analytics, you can understand geographical location of your visitors. Thereafter, you can modify your strategies in a way so that they fulfill requirements of visitors based in this particular location.

Checking Bounce Rate of Your Site

As stated earlier, website analytics is commonly used for calculating bounce rate of a website. If bounce rate of your site is high, it is obvious that certain features of your website are driving away visitors. General factors that contribute to high bounce rate include poor content, website errors, weak call-to-action statements, and broken links.

To reduce high bounce rate, you can opt for effective strategies, such as using valuable content and catchy call-to-action statements, and fixing the errors.

The above discussion emphasizes on the point that website analytics can be an effective tool for understanding user behavior and modifying Internet marketing strategies accordingly. Therefore, do not limit usage of website analytics in calculating your site traffic only. Research about the different usages of website analytics and you would be surprised to know how it can perk up your marketing efforts.

If you require any help, contact any reputed web design company.

The number of people using their mobile phones and tablet computers for surfing the internet is increasing everyday. Like everything else, internet is also becoming portable and mobile web design is becoming all the rage with business owners all over the world. Over half-a-billion people use their cell phones to log on to the internet and several of them use ONLY their cell phones to do so. So, yes, there is a wide audience to explore if you design a mobile website.

However small or large a company is, it is striving to launch a mobile version of its website. This is the time for website designers to start designing for the mobile web. Before starting to design for the mobile web, you need to study about mobile website design a bit. This would help you stay ahead of your rivals.

• Mobile web design is basically designing a website at a smaller scale. The commonest operating systems for mobile web are Android, iPhone platform, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, Mobile Linux, BlackBerry platform and Palm OS.

• The browsers that are most common in mobile internet are Opera Mobile (or Opera Mini), Android browser, Safari for iPhone, BlackBerry browser,  Internet Explorer Mobile, WebOS browser.

• Some mobile phones and tablets can show a website made for desktops just fine while others cannot. There could be other problems such as smaller screens on some cell phones. You cannot show a full desktop website on a small screen mobile phone.

• When it comes to coding, there are 3 common codes for browsers such as – Gecko,  proprietary code and WebKit. To understand the code that would be most suitable for your website, you need to find out what your mobile visitors will be searching for. Not all mobile devices have screens of the same size. Keep in mind that fact and you will be able to design a site that would fit all kinds of mobile devices.

Advantage of mobile web design.

• The number one advantage is mobility. Most people access the net on the go. So, if you can provide relevant information to what they are looking for when on the move, you will be able to get more business.

• Mobile website means you can get more visitors apart from desktop users.

• With mobile website designing, you can go beyond website design and branch into creating apps and software exclusively for mobile devices.

Disadvantage of mobile web design.

• Small screen size. This is the biggest disadvantage. Due to the smaller screen, users are not able to see visual effects, and some parts of the web pages where you may have put some important content. If important parts of your web pages like subscription forms or account view buttons are hidden from the view of your potential customers, how can you expect them to stay tuned for more?

• Sometimes, depending on the connection, some mobile phones take a lot of time to load web pages than others. This can be disastrous for e-commerce sites. These sites are loaded with product details, images and purchase options. If you have an ecommerce website, you have to look into this issue and rectify it accordingly.

• Interactivity is another major hindrance for mobile web sites. Scrolling through an input form takes a huge time on mobile sites and putting information in those form is an even slower process. This situation gets worse on touch screen phones.

• Flash is another issue you have to pay attention to. Though you can embed Flash videos in mobile websites, it makes the sites’ loading time slow.

Finally, keep in mind that mobile phones and tablets are evolving at a rapid speed, so you have to be always aware of the emerging trends and changing technologies. That would save your efforts and investment from going to waste.

Have some courage and set sail. This is the time to grab the mobile net market. Good mobile web designing will provide a nice user experience. So, do not procrastinate.

Best of luck!

Product page is the most important page of any e-commerce website, because it affects conversion rate. Hence, the product page of your e-commerce web design must convince the customers and compel them to buy products from your site.

Firstly, you should select a reliable content management system to develop your e-commerce website. Compared to other CMSs, Joomla is more flexible and allows you to add several custom elements in your site. Using Joomla website design, you can serve your customers efficiently.

In the World Wide Web, your competitor is always just a click away and a small mistake in your product page design can ruin your business. Below are some the things customers expect to see in a product page:

Required Elements of a Product Page

• Product Name- Make sure that the product name is brief, but descriptive. For instance, if you are selling LCD monitors, instead of writing only “LCD”, you can write “Full HD LCD monitor”. This way, both customers and search engines will understand what type of products you sell.

• Price- Customers look for a product price as soon as they shortlist a product. Write the price of each product in bold letters and include the price information beside the “buy” button.

• Buy Button- Without a “buy” button in your product page, your customers can’t buy a product? More often than not, designers make mistakes in “buy” button design, like making it too small and difficult to locate. The button should ideally be placed below or beside each product image.

Also, remember, if you are catering to USA customers, write “add to cart” on the “buy” button and for UK version of your site write, “add to basket.” Place the buy button above the fold so that your consumers can instantly see it.

Important Elements of a Product Page

• Images- Use large, high resolution images of products to convince your customers about product quality. Optimize images for faster download and use modal window, hover zoom feature to allow customers check every minute detail.

Provide multiple images for each product and give 360 degree angle views. Also, always show images of the actual products. For instance, if you are selling Samsung LCD model no 1234, don’t display the image of model no 5678, or for that matter, a different brand altogether that has a similar looking product.

• Product Description- Describe the important details of each product in an interesting manner. You can either write a brief summary or use a table layout to highlight the main features.

• Quantity Option- If a customer wants to buy 10 pieces of the same item, give him the option. Give a quantity option and let him choose as many as he needs. Don’t let him click back and forth 10 times to buy the same product.

Useful Elements of a Product Page

• Product Manufacturer’s Name- If you sell third party products from your online store, mention the manufacturer’s name. Different customers like different brands and displaying the brand name can increase your profit margin.

• Size and Dimension- In case, you are selling garments or shoes, display the size and color variation to give your customers a better shopping experience.

• Stock Available- Show available stock to create a sense of urgency and sell products faster. For instance, if you show that you have only 5 iPad left in your store, more customers will rush to buy those last few iPads.

When a product is completely out of stock, show the “out of stock” message and ask the customers to leave their email address for product availability notification.

Additional Elements

• Customer Reviews- Let your customers write product reviews. Display the most helpful reviews at the bottom of the product page. Remember to include the negative reviews as well because, 1. a product cannot satisfy all customers. 2. only good reviews, because of #1, makes a product unbelievable.

• Add to Wish List- Some of your customers may decide to buy a product later and for their benefit, you should give a “add to wish list” button. A wish list may not increase your sales figures immediately, but it will help you create loyal customers.

• Delivery Details- Display the delivery details of each product and write down the shipment charges. Potential customers may choose your site just because you give a “2-day delivery” and “shipping is completely free”.

These are some of the things you should consider to design a user-friendly product page. If you don’t have any experience in website design, you can also hire a website design company to develop your e-commerce site.

Every graphic designer wants to earn recognition and fame for his designs, but it’s not that easy. Graphic designing is a highly competitive industry and hundreds of graphic designers are producing brilliant designs everyday. Therefore, you must work very hard and come up with exciting, new design styles to appeal to the global audience.

Fame and recognition can give you better opportunities to expand your horizon, and earn the respect of fellow designers in your graphic design company. You can also demand higher prices from clients for your designs. But, you already know the benefits of becoming famous. However, how, in the first place, do you become a famous designer?

Here are some useful tips:

Accept Interview Requests, Always- Whenever a blog, talk show or website asks you for an interview, accept the offer. It’s always an honor to be interviewed, because only the best graphic designers are invited for such interviews.

Even a small interview can change people’s perception about your talent and start thinking, “He must be a great designer. Or, X website would not bothered to take his interview.”

However, it’s hard to get an interview invitation. So, start searching for websites and blogs that want to conduct graphic designer interviews and present yourself as a potential candidate. Of course, you may have to actively and productively participate in their discussions first to get noticed.

Write a Book- You can write a book on graphic design to prove your expertise. However, designing is a huge field and you should choose the subject of your book carefully. Write only on those topics that you are very confident about and have hands-on experience.

For instance, if you love to design logos, write a book on logo design. When you publish a book to share your knowledge, potential clients and other designers start respecting your grip on designing.

Get Featured in Magazines- People give more importance to a magazine article than an online article. Contact  editors of famous design magazines and submit your articles to them.

Of course, since famous magazines only publish excellent quality articles, and you are not really a writer, some of your articles may get rejected. Keep writing however to try and impress the editors with your writing and designing skills.

Start Your Own Blog- Blogging is one of the easiest and fastest ways to earn fame. Design a custom blog and start writing on important topics related to graphic design. Use some of your design samples within your articles to showcase your talent.

For instance, if you are writing about “brochure design”, insert some of your brochure design samples to prove your point. Blogging helps you get noticed in the designer community and potential clients also start respecting your wisdom.

Also, write Guest Posts. Make a list of the famous design blogs and start writing articles as a guest author. This way, more people will start recognizing your knowledge.

Actively Participate in Social Networks- Social networking is a boon for graphic artists and helps them gain reputation. Join Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc. and start connecting with your fans. Add other famous designers to your friend list. Share your latest designs with your friends and fans to promote your work successfully.

In the end, remember, earning fame is tough, and retaining it is tougher. You have to keep creating unique and appealing designs to justify your position in the industry.

Writing is a form of art, and like web designing and development, you should train yourself to write properly for websites. Web content writing is all about selling a brand using interesting words and phrases. Your content writing style should compel the readers to take an action.

However, writers can often make mistakes. Some web content writers are knowledgeable, but they fail to communicate with the readers. They think that there is nothing wrong with their articles, but unfortunately, readers think the other way.

If you work in a content writing India company, here are some of the things you should avoid to improve your writing skills.

1. An Unchanging Style of Writing- Every writer has his own writing style, but to be a successful writer, you should change with time. Online business is changing rapidly and you can’t stick to a writing style that expresses everything in somber and formal monotones. You may want to be casual when writing a travel article, or sassy when writing about fashion. Your writing style will be guided by the genre/subject and your readers.
2. Lengthy Paragraphs- Web users don’t like reading long paragraphs. Period. 85% just scan content and try extracting the main information. So, break your articles in small but information-rich paragraphs to increase readership. Get to the crux fast; avoid the frills.
3. Puzzling Expressions-Dramatic narration is good for novel writing, not for website content. Your target audience will visit your website for instant information. If you start using complicated, flowery language, they are likely to understand nothing and exit your page.
   Whatever information you may want to share with your audience must be written in a simple, lucid language. Think from a reader’s perspective and use words and expressions anyone can understand. Don’t use something like “traversing down the boulevard” as an alternative to saying “walking down the road”! Grand is not always Good.
4. Disobeying Grammar for Creative License- Some writers write great, informative articles, but the grammatical mistakes in their content disappoint readers. Once you finish an article, check it for grammatical mistakes.
   People speak in incorrect grammar all the time. However, reading an article with such can dampen their zeal to read. Bad grammar does not equal to colloquial style.
5. No Keywords- Search engines scan website content and decide the SERP page rank of every website. Therefore, you should insert relevant keywords in your client’s website to make his online business successful.

Before you start writing, do some keyword research and note down the important keywords. For instance, if your client offers logo design services, you can use “logo design”, “graphic design”, “brand identity design”, etc, as keywords for his website.

Your content writing style should create a bridge of communication between site owner and his targeted readers. Don’t forget that a website can’t be successful if its readers don’t like the website’s content. Pay attention to readers’ comments and make the necessary changes to improve your writing skills. Also, when a client gives you project specifications, pay attention to him and talk respectfully. Clients like to work with people receptive to suggestions.