Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Top Tips for Effective Web Design

Do you have a website?

Are you looking for a way to increase the traffic to your site?

Are you worried that your site doesn’t look as professional as it could?

Do you want to make sure potential clients and customers trust your website?

Having good and effective web design seems like a no-brainer, but the truth is that many businesses lose business because their websites aren’t well designed. Don’t make the same mistake!

To make sure that you have the most effective web design possible, follow these simple tips!

1) Have a clear purpose: Make sure that each page on your site has a specific purpose. Part of web design involves fulfilling a need for your customers, and the easiest way to do that is to give them a site that’s easy to navigate.

2) Don’t go crazy with fonts: It is easy to get carried away when designing a site, but remember that your customers need to be able to quickly get the information they want. Stick with a maximum of 3 separate typefaces, and remember that the ideal font size for easy online reading is 16px.

3) Colors and images: Take time to think about the color scheme of your site. Contrasting colors for the text and the background will make reading easier for your visitors, and vibrant colors should be used sparingly. Choosing the right images for your site can go a long way when it comes to marketing and the overall image. High quality photos are best.

4) Mobile Friendly: Making sure your website is “responsive” is probably not something you worried about before, but with some new changes Google has made, this new element of web design is critical. Responsive design allows your site to be viewed on all devices (including smartphones and tablets) at a high resolution.

If you’re unsure about your web design, ask someone else to use your site and see what they think. Getting an outside opinion can help to see your site from the customer’s point of view, and can let you know what you can improve. Or, contact SEO Ann Arbor for a free website evaluation! We can help with website design, SEO, PPC advertising, blogging and more! Visit us at www.SEOAnnArbor.com or call us at  877-815-6974.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

5 Best Web Design Tools

To attract visitors to your business, you make sure that your office or storefront is pleasing to the eye.

Why should you approach online business any differently?

If you’re unfamiliar with web design, this can seem like a daunting task.

Don’t be afraid of web design! There are many people just like you who are looking at web design with a critical eye in order to make their businesses more successful.

Here are five great web design tools (according to quickonlinetips.com) that are sure to make your website function better, look better, and grow your business. The best part is that you won’t need to learn a bunch of HTML or CSS to make it work!

1) Firebug – Firebug is a web development tool that lets users edit code on any live site. This program also provides diagnostic and debugging tools to make fixing problems easier.

2) Colorzilla – Colorzilla is an add-on for Firefox that lets the user pick out individual colors on websites instead of trying to eyeball the exact shade of blue, for example. This will also give you the code you need to use that color on your own site.

3) Colour Lovers – This site is for sharing palettes or patterns and is great for users who are looking for free to use background images or header images. This site also provides design tools for users to create their own.

4) Pingdom – This site loads your website in real time including all images and other aspects of the code. When it tests your site, it will test your load time and give you stats on how long all your objects take to load. This is important because, as you know, 20 seconds on the internet can seem like an eternity!

5) Foundation 3 – This program essentially acts as a blueprint for all your web design projects. Foundation 3 will help you design your website in a way that will make it responsive, or able to be viewed on a bunch of different mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.

Of course, any web design tool requires a bit of knowledge of coding. If you’re unsure of how to approach better web design, we can help you! Contact us at SEO Ann Arbor for a free website evaluation and we’ll be happy to help you make your website function as well as possible!