Web development

Super-cool plug-ins, the latest CSS3 wizardry and a streamlined mobile site are all well and good, but without killer content, your site is wasted.

Here are the top 10 tips to create powerful, persuasive copy that will bring true value to your reader.

1. Understand your goal: 
You need a plan and every word you write should support that plan.  Powerful, persuasive copy is vital to your cause.  Unless it is supporting your marketing plan, it’s just wasted effort.

2. Inspire a response:  
Know the response you want, and keep it in mind.   If, after reading, your readers aren’t inspired to DO some kind of action, your copy is useless.

3. Keep it simple: 
Do keep verbs active not passive.  Don’t use three words where one will do.  Do use everyday vocabulary. Don’t use complicated sentences. Do avoid unnecessary jargon. Do use short, easily digestible sentences. Finally, Do use correct punctuation and spelling.

4. Write for your audience:
A big mistake when writing copy is talking about “us” instead of “you”.  You have about 3 seconds to hook your reader and to present your product or service, or show them how they can be cleverer/wiser/healthier or wealthier, etc.  Be informal and chatty where appropriate.  Be respectful and honest. And if you can throw in a bit of humour without being cheesy, you are on to a winning formula.

5. Short and sweet:
We manage our lives in lightning-speed-micro-chunks, so get your point across quickly and clearly.  Aim for around 200-300 words per article.  Naturally, some articles will be longer, so have a “read more” link for readers who want to carry on reading.

6. Write with confidence:
Be proud of your products or services!  You need to show your reader your passion for what you do.  If you are not passionate about it, how can your reader be.  Lacklustre copy leaves your reader cold, so make sure your copy sings with confidence.

7. Show off your USP: 
Why should your reader contact, shop, browse, book, or reserve with you?   Demonstrate your individuality with tangible evidence.  It’s a cynical age.  Shout your distinctions from the rooftop, but make sure you can back it up.

8. Empathise:
Showing that you recognise your customers pain demonstrates an understanding of their issues.  It builds a sense of trust and helps your reader walk a little further down the path to purchasing your product or service.

9. Be their best solution:
After demonstrating your understanding of the issues,  you need to offer the customer the solution to their problem and compel them to continue reading.  It’s the best way to convince them that you really do have a solution to their problem.

10. Edit:
And edit, and edit again.  First drafts often contain nuggets of greatness, but there’s plenty of “fluff” to strip away!  If you find editing hard, give it to someone else.  They can be more objective than you.  A cheaper option, if you are on a tight budget, is to write your draft copy with all the salient points, and then pay a copy-editor to polish it.

For getting cost effective, powerful and professional copy for your website, contact us by clicking here.

The current buzzword in web design is ‘flexibility’.  Designers must work harder than ever to incorporate sophisticated aesthetic appeal with accurate functionality.  Here are our hottest web-design trends:

1. Web to go:
The surge of “mobilized” and “tabletized” websites is the biggest design challenge to face web developers this year. Some core rules can make your mobile web take off. “Responsive” web design (page layouts that change automagically when they detect the size of the screen they are being displayed on), efficient data transfer and image optimisation, and clear scaleable text fonts.

2. Demise of the page-fold:
Current web design trends are kicking the page-fold (the space below the 550 pixel scroll-line) into touch.  The most important messages should still be near the top of a site, but with so many new ways to view the web, old definitions are getting blurred.

3. Typography:
Web designs are increasingly blurring distinctions between print and web-based design.  Web developers are creating websites that imitate classic print-based designs, and along with major improvements in font technology, websites are displaying a distinctly editorial feel, with bold print-style typography.

4. Grid layouts
Grid layouts aren’t new, but web designers are cutting loose from conventional layouts, i.e. header, content column, sidebar, footer, and adopting more visually appealing layouts by using grids of various sizes – 960 and 1140 pixels being typical widths.

5. Social media
Integration with social media has been growing for a while. Clients are now representing their brands or businesses via a purely social media strategy, rather than relying on their individual domain names.  Social media has huge potential, and canny clients will choose to “ride the wave” rather than risk being left behind.

6. Blogs
While this is more a web marketing than web design trend, clients who ignore the need for a blog in their website design do so at their peril.  Your blog arguably works harder any other page on your website, adds value to a brand, and should deliver something unique, authorative and useful to your reader.

7. Texture
Texture isn’t new, but with the advent of CSS3 we’re seeing increasingly more sophisticated and creative ways to integrate texture into web designs, rendering them almost tangibly touchable.

8. Supersize images
Web designers have long since been told to avoid large images, or predominantly image-based websites, but thanks to better image optimization, faster internet connections, and smarter loading methods, designers have a lot more of a free rein with image size now. Have a look at the use of images in this site for example.

9. Infographics
Designers love infographics and there is a growing trend which is seeing infographics integrated into web designs.  They are a great way to impart complicated information quickly, are visually iconic, and have great potential when used as more than a mere attachment.

10. 3D technology
3D is fun, novel and NOW, but not all browsers and devices support them. However, 3D is definitely the shiny new toy so keep a close eye on this one.

For cost effective, professional and affordable ways to incorporate these latest design trends into your website, contact us by clicking here.

Once upon a time, web developers designed beautiful websites to be viewed on desktop computers. There were variations between browser types and screen resolutions, but that was all in a day’s work.

Massive growth in mobile phones is causing a huge re-evaluation in web design and development.  Designers must adapt traditionally-held beliefs about web design and embrace the new mobile era, or go the way of the dinosaurs. Here’s how:

1) Streamlined layout:
Limited display size and speed of use both dictate that mobile web designs are simply laid-out, without any of the peripheral clutter of a desktop website. Designers should make sure that everything presented on a mobile phone screen should be accessible, usable, and readable.

2) Simplified navigation:
Simple, stripped-down navigation should be prominent and central on a mobile phone.  Top-level navigation can be condensed to four or fewer items on most mobile phones.  Everything must have a clear purpose and function and every option must encourage the user to take action.

3) Shrink-wrapped content:
Content is still king, even on mobile devices, but it must be hard-working scalable copy with a clear purpose, a strong call to action and absolutely no “fluff”.

A mobile phone design cuts out the peripheral non-essentials, but must keep and enhance functionality (buttons, logos, boxes, etc.) in order to offer a meaningful mobile web experience.

Questioning everything is the only way to strip a website down to its essential elements, which is what needs to happen on a good mobile phone website.

4) Design-lite:
With the limited rendering capabilities of mobile phones, designers should incorporate:

1. Lightweight graphics for quick response to user requests
2. Touch-screen friendly actionable copy (links) that don’t need expanding
3. Well spaced links to allow for ease of use
4. Logos which always appear at the top

5) Gimmick-free:
Splash screens, meaningless animations and fixed-width layouts are out of place on a mobile phone.  Everything should be relevant and completely useful:

1. Is the content critical, and does it serve the core purpose of the website?
2. Is the website easy to use and understand?
3. Does it contain the same the core functionality as the main website?
4. Is the navigation unconventional?
5, If so, is it critical to the function of the website?

Web designers should bring value to a mobile phone website.  Does every feature help increase profit? Can the design be changed to improve business? The task is to make it easy to browse, shop, book, reserve or contact the client online, whether the customer is at their desk or on the move.

For cost effective, professional and affordable ways to develop your design ideas to the mobile web, contact us by clicking here.

A guide for creative, design and marketing professionals

Converting traditional, print-based, design skills to the web can throw up some snags that will trip up the most seasoned creative professional.

Here are some tips on how traditional design skills can be adapted when designing for the web:

1. Make it easy on the eye:
White space and good typography are critical to effective design. When the web was in its infancy, white space was a luxury for print-based media and typography was limited to a few “web-safe fonts” with very little control over how they were displayed. With higher screen resolutions, increasingly sophisticated programming tools, and improvements in font-smoothing technology, there is greater scope to include vital white space and creative typography into your web design.

2. Less is more:
We’ve all heard of the acronym, ‘K.I.S.S.’ (Keep it Simple, Stupid), and this even more fitting when designing for the web.

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

If a design element doesn’t enhance the message or improve the functionality of a website, then it only makes the overall impact less effective. Simple designs are quicker to assimilate, easier to understand, and offer greater clarity when communicating your message.

3. Content is king:
Generally, web designers work within a 990 x 550 pixel “safe area”. There is a belief that anything below the 550 pixel safe area (or ‘page fold’) will be ignored. However, simply cramming huge blocks of text above the page fold is not the answer. When designing for the web, content is king. Keep vital information above the page fold, but if you make your content compelling then people will want to carry on reading.

4. Right tools for the job:
Traditional design software works in millimeters or inches, but when designing for the web, it’s power to the pixel. Designs, text or graphics that looked amazing in your print-based software, can present huge problems or may be rendered unusable when exported to a pixel-based package.

For cost effective, professional and affordable ways to translate your design ideas to the web,  contact us by clicking here.

As a marketing agency, graphic designer, or design agency, adding web design or development to your portfolio might seem an easy service to offer, but in reality many great marketing and design professionals can find themselves coming unstuck by undertaking their own in-house website development.

Here are 8 reasons why you should outsource your web design and development projects:

1. Outsourcing your web development or design gives you more time to focus on your core marketing or design business.  This helps you win more clients and ultimately makes you more profitable.

2. Boost your bottom line. Outsourcing eliminates the need to hire, train or retain web development staff, thereby saving huge sums in staff overheads.

3. You can tap into up-to-the minute expertise of highly skilled web developers and designers who will create or develop your clients site idea into a profitable, traffic-rich and efficient PR machine in a fraction of the time it could take you.

4. Outsourcing your web development process can ensure that your site is optimized for best search engine rankings, using the latest search engine optimization techniques and tricks that you may not be aware of.

5. You can achieve a significantly quicker turnaround of your web project by using a dedicated, specialist web development team, all working to YOUR deadlines.

6. Outsourcing your web design and development eliminates the need for in-house operations and maintenance support – its all done for you.

7. Developing a good partnership with your web development team boosts your manpower, with none of the overheads.

8. By outsourcing your web development and management projects to a company who integrates, shares and manages your social media content, both you and your clients are free to reap the rewards and benefit from greater brand awareness.

To save time and money, with cost-effective, professional, affordable web development, contact us by clicking here.