Category: Web Design

Why A Great Design Will Keep Visitors On Your Dental Clinic’s Website For Longer

Business & Legal Advice, Web Design
Why A Great Design Will Keep Visitors On Your Dental Clinic’s Website For Longer

As a dentist, we are sure that your life exists beyond the four walls of your treatment room and the confines of your dental practice. As such, you no doubt enjoy spending time with friends and family. When doing so, have you ever walked into a restaurant, cafe, or bar, looked around, and walked right back out again?

This might have been for many reasons, such as a lack of cleanliness, horrible decor, or a less-than-friendly receptionist. Alternatively, you might have stayed for a short period of time but left soon thereafter for some of those same reasons.

The scenario we have just discussed is one that is experienced in the offline world, but it plays out exactly the same online, specifically with regard to websites. All the issues we listed within those offline establishments can occur when someone visits a website, and the biggest concern is that if it happens to your dental practice’s website, it can cause your search engine ranking to diminish.

It can diminish because search engines can measure how long each person visiting your website remains there, and whether or not they arrived, and then left immediately. They see this as a signal that your website design is not one that visitors like or enjoy, and that serves as a huge red flag to them.

They want a positive experience for those who search and click through to websites from their search engine, and thus they reward websites where visitors seem to remain for some time and penalise those which appear to do the opposite. This then begs the question as to what you can do to ensure those who visit your dental practice website stay for longer.

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4 Reasons Why a Good Web Design Is So Important For Your Business

Web Design

In this digital age, one of the best ways to substantially promote your business is by launching a website. However, it is very important to be aware of what kind of website you need before you make a decision.

A site with a good web design is the best way to increase marketing for your business. But the problem here is that although it is easy to launch a general website, it is very hard to come up with an idea that exactly satisfies the buyer’s needs.

A well-defined set of skills is required to come up with a website that serves the client’s needs and although, it can be costly and time-consuming to develop in the beginning, an effective web design will surely benefit you in the long run. Some of the advantages a good web design can provide to your business include:

1.     Help in Achieving Sales Target

This is especially true for business websites. If the basic objective of your website is to generate leads or increase sales for your business, a good web design will make it much easier to achieve the targets. It will also become more convenient to reach the right audience. Without any distractions or obstacles, the user will be able to reach exactly what they are looking for on your site. You can also add your call to action at the right spot to suggest the next step you want your user to take.

But along with all this, it is very important to have a website which is not only visually appealing but also easy to navigate.

2.     The Benefits of a Responsive Web Design

Having a responsive and effective web design can also significantly help your business. Considering the variety of devices people use the internet on, such as tablets, PCs, and mobile phones, it is important for all business websites to have a responsive web design. You can also target an entirely new set of customers in this way. With a responsive web design, it will be easier for users to place orders, even from their mobile phones and immediately engage in a business transaction with you.

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Ensure Your Landscaping Website Does Not Have These 5 Design Mistakes

Web Design

You might expect that landscapers would have only tasks relating to planning, designing, and constructing landscaped gardens to think about. Whilst those tasks will certainly account for the vast majority of their efforts, other matters within their business do require some of their time.

If you are a landscaper and wondering what we are referring to, the title of this post should alert you to the fact that if you want your website to be an asset that helps your business flourish, then it needs to have been designed correctly. Unfortunately, too many landscapers are unaware of not only how important their website’s design is to their business but worse, that there can be serious design flaws that can make their website barely fit for purpose.

We do not plan to make this post a website design tuitional but instead, we will highlight the most common website design errors which landscapers should be aware of, and if they discover their website has any of them, they should take steps to correct them.

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7 Mistakes For Employment Lawyers To Avoid When Your Business Website Is Being Designed

Business & Legal Advice, Web Design
7 Mistakes For Employment Lawyers To Avoid When Your Business Website Is Being Designed

One of the assets that can play a significant role in generating new clients for your employment lawyers business is your website. A well-designed website that is easy to navigate, offers excellent information, looks great, and converts well will see a high proportion of prospects who visit it becoming paying clients.

Conversely, if your website offers none of these and is more likely to see prospectors click away within a few seconds of them landing on it, it is going to produce nothing other than frustration. Worse than that, with people leaving your website so quickly it will damage any search engine rankings you have on Google.

Many of the problems that divorce lawyers experience with their website stem from its creation. Unfortunately, they allow several mistakes to be made within its design, and if the people employed to create that website are inexperienced, or more distressingly, have little care for how the website will perform, it is a recipe for disaster.

To help any divorce lawyers who are thinking about having a new website created or their current website redesigned, here are seven of the most common website design mistakes which must be avoided.

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4 Key Elements To Promoting Fire Safety Within Your Business Premises

Web Design
4 Key Elements To Promoting Fire Safety Within Your Business Premises

Whether you are an employer or a senior person in an organisation, you have a high level of responsibility in ensuring that fire safety is given priority within your building, and one of the best ways to discharge that responsibility is by employing a fire services company, to design, install, inspect, service and maintain your fire safety equipment. By doing so you can be satisfied that fire protection and safety within your building, and for those who work or visit there, is maximised.

However, although we mentioned that you may have a high level of responsibility, that does not mean to say that no one else in your company or organization has none. In fact, it is the case that every individual has a degree of responsibility, not only for their own safety but also for the well-being of others. In the context of fire safety, there is much you can do to promote this, and it is not that difficult to do.

Here are 4 ways in which you can promote fire safety to individuals that work for you, or with whom you work, so that they have a greater awareness of it, with the hope that they can contribute to helping to prevent fires, and to taking safe and appropriate action should one occur.

Have Documented Fire Prevention/Emergency Plans

Whilst fire safety regulations differ from state to state and from country to country, one constant throughout is that businesses and organisations should have some form of written fire safety plan. This does not have to run to hundreds of pages, and the simpler it is the better so that any employee reading it can understand it. It should include such details as fire hazards, control of flammable materials, evacuation plans, and those who are designated specific fire safety responsibilities.

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Top 5 Web Design Code Libraries & Frameworks

Web Design

In the past, most websites were coded from scratch. This was a very time-consuming process, and it led to the development of things like code libraries and frameworks. Web designers throughout the world make use of various libraries every day to streamline the design process and make their lives easier.

With this in mind, I’ve done some research into the best code libraries and frameworks available for web design experts in 2019. My top five choices include:

  1. Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a popular front-end development framework that comes with a great feature library. It allows you to develop both websites and apps, and has become one of the most commonly used frameworks in the world.

One of my favourite things about Bootstrap is that it’s open-source and fully documented. This means that you can add your own code to improve the framework if you want, and there are plenty of help resources out there that you can draw on if you have problems at any point.

  1. Material Components Web Library

Google’s Material Components Web library is a great resource for front-end web developers and web designers alike. It comes with a great range of components and design elements that you can add directly to your next website project.

Although it is still growing, this library has already become one of the most popular in the world. Its components are compatible with numerous different frameworks and development environments.

  1. Effeckt.css

Here we have something a little different. To put it simply, effect.css is a CSS code library that includes thousands of animation elements. You can use it to add animation effects to things like buttons, lists, tabs, and images.

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How Can I Get The Most Out Of My WordPress SEO Efforts?

Web Design
WordPress SEO Efforts

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is one of the most important things to consider when building a new WordPress website. If you do things right from the start then ongoing SEO and following SEO trends will be easy. However, it will still take a bit of time and money, which means that you should think carefully about where to best direct your efforts.

Once you find out the common SEO terms and their meanings, it’s time to look further into SEO. With this in mind, I’ve come up with a few things that you can do to make sure that you get the most out of your ongoing WordPress SEO efforts. These include:

Using an SEO optimized theme:

Using a search engine-optimised theme is one of the best ways to make sure that your ongoing SEO efforts are going to be effective. Having a decent theme – with well-written code and a decent layout – is crucial when it comes to ranking well.

It’s worth spending a bit of time and money to make sure that you get the right theme to start with. Ask others in the industry, try and get theme recommendations from reputable sources, and above all, don’t be afraid to pay for a premium theme.

Maintain your image library:

It’s very important to make sure that you don’t get lazy when it comes to uploading images to your WordPress website. If you do, your SEO efforts will be impacted.

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3 Web Design Trends for 2018

Web Design
Web Design

Whether you’re experienced or a complete beginner in web design, a good-looking website is a crucial element of the online presence of many businesses. It is the one digital medium which is constantly seeing changes from one year to the next. With trends in web design shifting from one thing to another in almost a blink of an eye, it is important for businesses to keep their company’s web design up to date with the latest trends or they risk being left behind.

2017 saw many technological advancements impacting the digital realm, and with more and more traffic moving to mobile devices, it is only logical to point out that web design is now going to be more focused on making websites mobile-friendly. Here are some of the most notable changes in the trends for web design that will be important in 2018.

  1. Vibrant Colour Themes

One thing that is for sure going to be important 18 years into the new millennium is the excessive use of vibrant colours in the online realm. In the past, technology had not advanced enough or was not very accessible to everybody, so web design was limited to making use of colour schemes that would be easier to handle for devices across the board. That will no longer be the case in 2018.

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3 Steps to an eCommerce Website

Web Design
eCommerce-Website

Having a successful e-commerce website from which to sell goods globally is the dream of many people. It would allow them to work from home or have a second job that could be done from home while they still keep their day job. Some people have become so successful that they were able to give up their day job altogether.

If you dream about doing that, it’s a good idea to put some thought and research into it first, so here are 3 steps to help you.

    • Choose the product. It may take some time to work out what is best for you. It needs to be something you are interested in or even passionate about, that is also a popular product in the market. There is no point in trying to sell stuff that no one wants. Choose a product by (a) the selling price – it needs to be enough to give you a good return over your investment (ROI). So make sure your cut on the sale is enough to make you a nice profit. (b) Make sure the product is not available in locally. If people can’t get it locally they have to go online to shop. (c) Make sure the product is not too big and heavy, or shipping costs will be very expensive. It should not be breakable either so less packing will be needed.

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4 Key Elements to Developing Modern Web Design

Web Design

There are numerous plans you can follow when it comes to building a website. However, the basic points remain the same. If you want to generate higher traffic, it is very essential to focus on a few critical factors when developing good looking and effective web design.

You should take in consideration whitespace, great images, clear calls-to-action, search functionality and other elements that can make a lot of difference. Some of these key elements are described below:

Right Use of Spacing

When it comes to an effective web design, it is very important to manage space effectively. It helps in dictating flow, readability and navigation of the page. More designers now use space in an effective manner to increase web traffic and increase user engagement.

The key is to use spacing between lines of text, expanding open space and maintaining spatial relationships. There should be a consistency in spacing and the amount of space between lines should remain the same throughout a page. The right usage of space is also essential in creating a focal point. Any image or text which is surrounded by white space will seem larger and heavier than other material on the page.

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5 Benefits of a User-Friendly Web Design

Web Design

Considering the fierce competition in the digital market, you can never be too user-friendly for your audience. However, according to digital agencies, it can be very difficult to implement unique marketing strategies to attract your targeted users.

Slinky Digital says that developing an effective web design for your site is one way you can get the attention of your potential buyers. Although there are countless technical and promotional benefits of a good web design, some of the most common web design etiquette include:

1.      Increased Activity on Your Page

You will be able to engage more visitors to stay on your page. Since the basic objective is not only to attract visitors but to turn them into customers, you need someone to go through the different pages of your website, read your content, know about your services and take the necessary actions as suggested on the site.

If your website does not have a strong web design, most people who get to your page will leave immediately. A website needs to be build to create sufficient interest on the user’s part.

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5 Common Mistakes in Web Design That Drive Visitors Away

Web Design

Website owners do their best to attract, hold and retain the interest of their users. They promote their web pages on various social media platforms, invest in web design and hire the best professionals to generate optimum results. However, more often than not, the website fails to capture enough attention.  In most of the cases, this is due to a simple mistake on the web designer’s part.

Mistakes that seem very small on the surface can significantly impact the appeal of a website. Usually, the fault is so subtle that it is hard to even pinpoint. However, it can drive hundreds of visitors away every day. So, what are some of these understated errors that are doing so much harm? Let’s check them out!

1.     Broken Links on Site

This is one of the strongest reasons for why people usually leave a website. If a visitor wants to reach another page on your site but the link is broken, it can leave a very bad impression. Any bad links, hyperlinks that redirect to the same page, links that do nothing or lead to error pages can be very frustrating for the users. The best way to get rid of such errors is to constantly keep a check on your web pages. It is also important to include a ‘Contact the Webmaster’ option, in case any emergency arises. This way, users will have minimum difficulty in navigating through the pages.

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Are You Getting a New Web Design? 6 Things to Consider

Web Design
web-design

You have committed your time and money to creating a new website for your business. If you think all you need to do is to choose a web designer you would be wrong. If you want a website that’s highly successful there are plenty of things you need to do. Before you have your web designer builds your website, there is plenty to carefully plan, because if you plan poorly it’s going to cost you time and money, and you’ll be disappointed. Let’s look at 6 things you should consider.

  1. Establish the aim, target and theme of your website –  What will you do on your website? Sell products/services, provide information, etc. You also need to know who your target market is because that will also determine what your theme will look like. If you want a site that’s successful, you need to know your target market.
  1. Know what it will cost – You will want to know how long it will take to launch your website and what the web design is going to cost you. You’ll also want to know what it will cost monthly if the web designer takes care of the monthly maintenance.

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Skills You Need to Become a Successful Web Designer

Web Design

Web designing has evolved into a competitive market niche and it can be quite difficult to excel in this area. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the success of a website. The designer has to focus on multiple elements while delivering a project on time. If you aim to become an accomplished web designer, some of the most important skills you should acquire are:

Written Communication Is the Key

To be a successful web designer, this is one of the most important skills you need. The success of your website largely depends on the quality of content you use. The best web designer should not only know what banners to put on a web page, but also know the effective use of words to ensure readability of the content.

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4 Top Web Design Trends for 2013

Web Design

When it comes to affordable web design, it seems 2013 is going to see some changes in the trends. Let’s have a look at 4 top web design trends for this year.

  • Typography – Front & Centre

    Web designers are focused on the weight each component, like JavaScript or images, has on the site they are building. In the last couple of years there have been huge improvements to web type, which means that typography usages is likely to become the central design element. Layouts and typography based on content can be made responsive much easier.

  • Designs That Are More Responsive

    Responsive websites aren’t new, but what is new is the methodology behind the responsive web design. 2012 we saw a focus on responsive designs for new devices like the iPad mini. For 2013, the focus is more likely to be focused around the responsiveness of the website itself rather than the numerous devices on the market.

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Google and Privacy: Much Ado About Nothing

Web Design
google-privacy-policy

So it turns out that self-confessed Google junkies really don’t give a flip whether Google collects data on them or not. No, in fact, some of them say “yeah, bring it on!” This is the counter-reaction to the reaction to the new Google privacy policy. Another one is this guy, who points out that Google underestimated his age by half.

Look, people, it’s this simple:

  • You can opt out any time.
  • You can get five computers with three web browsers on each and delete cookies and search as 15 different strangers if you’re that paranoid.
  • Google is only collecting data and saving it to target marketing. That’s been the cornerstone of capitalism since the invention of money.
  • All this data will consist of is your interests, and guess at your gender and age. It doesn’t steal your credit card or anything.
  • Some of us (blog writers, for instance) have interests that aren’t going to make sense to a tracking algorithm anyway.

OK? Can everybody quit panicking?

How Could We Lose Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy In the Same Month?

Web Design
dennis-ritchie-and-john-mcc

Never heard of those two names? If so, we’re sorry for you. You would have to know that Steve Jobs died. Everybody (at least in the tech blog world) knows that he’s the founder and longtime CEO of Apple Inc. He made the front page of newspapers and the cover of magazines the world over when he passed away this last October.

But two more giants in computing passed away last October also, and they were barely noticed.

Dennis Ritchie founded the C programming language. He was also one of the founding fathers of Unix. He was one half of the partnership of Ken Thompson, with whom he basically invented the modern operating system and the modern programming platform as we know it today.

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What Does Responsive Web Design Mean?

Web Design

“Responsive” is the new word going around the web design campfire. It was first coined by the web design blog “A List Apart” and has become the term being batted around the meeting table every Monday morning.

OK, but what does responsive web design mean? For a web design to be responsive, that means that it must respond to how it is viewed. In other words, it should serve different content or styling depending on if a visitor is using a mobile phone, a tablet, a laptop, or a full-screen desktop to view it. And these days, you have to throw in people browsing on anything from a gaming console to an Arduino-powered wristwatch.

A side-order of other buzzwords: “Multi-device layout patterns” – the template for a responsive website. “Dynamic CSS” – Cascading Style Sheets that warp to fit whatever screensize you view it on. “Viewport” – the screen space you have available. And you’re likely to see “responsive web design” abbreviated as “RWD.”

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Adobe v HTML5

Web Design

The story of the Internet has always been a battle between the old guard corporations and the new guard users.

So, Microsoft has had to battle against Free and Open Source software, IBM had to battle against the PC clones, Apple had to battle against the PC, proprietary Unix had to battle against BSDs, and so on. remember DEC? The Digital Equipment Corporation once ruled the computing world with the PDP and the VAX throughout the 1970s. But time goes by and progress marches on.

What’s bizarre is that corporations don’t seem to learn from history. Adobe, which has already had to fight for its survival when the free image-editor Gimp has risen to challenge Adobe’s flagship cash cow Photoshop, now finds itself at odds over its second most-lucrative business, Flash. HTML5 is coming, inevitably, and there’s very little that Adobe’s proprietary Flash platform can do that HTML5’s canvas element can’t.

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