Thursday, September 18, 2014

9 Website Design Mistakes that Can Actually Kill Your Reputation

Today, majority of the businesses have their own websites representing their business all around the globe. Design of the website plays a critical role in the overall appearance of a site. However, hiring an inexpert designer can damage your web reputation immensely because of the most common mistakes they are likely to make.

Some of the most common, but critical mistakes made are as below:

1. If loading time of your web pages is high, no costumer is going to watch your dumb load meter. Loading time should be lean and fast, unless you have special plans to bore your visitors.

2. Iffy navigation is considered one of the major aspects that distract the visitors away from your website. Keep is simple and stable.

3. Many designers in order to give a unique look to their website use overly bright colors, flashes, and images. Well, it is not going to get you anywhere else than high bounce rate. An expert will always make sure to maintain a color scheme and avoid excessive flash.

4. Does not matter how good a design team is, you just cannot afford to ignore the testing part. Untested website can pose a big risk to its overall usability. Test it on different browsers to ensure its compatibility.

5. Who wants to visit a website filled with clutter? A messy layout gives eyes of your visitors no central location to focus and they are likely to get rid of it suggesting that it was handled unprofessionally. A clean layout is the basic need of every site.

6. Many websites use background music, regardless of the fact that they have nothing to do with the music industry. In case, you have background music that fits in perfectly, make sure that visitors can turn it off easily. Not all of them may like it necessarily.

7. There is no place for any non-standard links on your website, as it frustrates the customers. Thus, do not confuse them with different colors or fonts that are different on every page.

8. Every website requires search engine optimization at some point, if web pages are not search-engine friendly, it will double the work later on and may affect search engine rankings as well.

9. Having ads on your web is acceptable, but if you overdo it, it’s certainly not. No one likes to visit or stay on a site that is bombarded with ads.

Hence, when looking for a website design company in NYC, make sure that you go with a reputable organization with proven track record.

Monday, September 1, 2014

Top tools that a website designer needs for designing

Web designers are the IT professionals that design various types of websites and webpages. Along with their creativity, they also need different types of software for designing. These software help them in transforming their creativity into a real image. Here are some tools, which are used by designers:

Webflow – This tool helps designers in creating websites fast and easy. There is no need for typing all codes for designing and still, in result there will be a responsive design. This editor provides several features such as drag and drop. Professionals of this field, who want to build fast webpages without typing codes, can take the help of Webflow.

CodeKit – It is software, which can help in compiling Less, Sass, Stylus, and many other files. It automatically reloads the page in browser, effectively ending the process of going from one window to another. In CodeKit, there are many features can be used such as WordPress, jQuery and Bootstrap etc.

Adobe Edge Reflow – This tool can handle various tasks of designing such as creating elements, grid system etc. In its features, visual media query breakpoints, Photoshop assets, Typekit, exporting HTML and CSS, creating form elements are included.

Google Fonts – Google Fonts helps in finding fonts and applying them in websites. For finding perfect font that properly fits with web pages, this is an essential tool.

FitText
– FitText is a jQuery plugin, which is usually used for creating headlines. For different devices, getting the proper font is necessary for websites. It makes fonts flexible, so that they can fit on any device. However, it is only used for headlines, it is not for paragraphs.

Responsinator – This is the tool which is used when designers wants to see, how their websites looks on different devices. It is very useful since millions of people use internet on their mobiles. It becomes necessary for designers to create webpages that look good on every device. For testing their pages, Responsinator is the best option.

Photoshop – Photoshop is used by professional all over the world for years now. It is one of the basic software used in designing. Professionals can use it for getting perfect design and customized results.

Illustrator – Adobe Illustrator provides various features that can help in designing. It offers export of CSS and many other tools.

Designers, whether they work alone or in a big NYC website design company, they will always need these software.