by Kristina Parker | Mar 31, 2014 | Interactive, Latest
Designing digital properties is more important than ever for business, and no matter what industry you are working in you should make sure that you understand it and know how to work with it. This is especially true if you are designing digital products because you need to know how to create those products in a way that will make them intuitive to use and good to look at. Designing digital properties such as blogs, websites or any online presence if you want to make the most of your marketing initiatives. In an age where every business is fighting for attention online and through other forms of media, creating an attractive and communicative design that is also technologically sound is one of the most effective ways to stand out.
Designing digital properties takes the right tech and the right approach
If your business is not intrinsically a design company though, then chances are, you may struggle when getting started and creating your layouts.Whether you are designing digital products or designing digital properties for your business, you’ll need to understand the digital space is key. Read on and we’ll look at some of the best ways you can give yourself the edge.
The Right Hardware and Software
The first piece of advice for new companies that want to improve their online digital design work, is to make sure to invest in the very best hardware and software. Software wise, big organizations will of course be able to afford more cutting edge programs that come at a premium, and these can potentially give them the edge if you’re still working with MS Paint. Fortunately though, if you know where to look you’ll find a lot of free software out there that is in many cases just as capable – or even more powerful – than the ‘originals’.
A great example of this is GiMP. GiMP is a piece of photo/image editing software that takes a similar approach to PhotoShop and that can do most of the same things that the famous Adobe offering can. The only real difference? It’s free! Likewise ‘Open Office’ will give you Microsoft Office functionality with no fee, while Blender lets you create 3D files for a fraction of the cost.
Hardware wise it’s worth looking into which devices can give you the edge and help your designs to look more professional while saving you money. For instance, rather than use an expensive graphics tablet to input hand-drawn images, many companies can get by simply using a touchscreen hybrid slate computer with a stylus. This way you can draw straight onto the screen using software like SketchBook Pro.
Likewise why not look into getting a 3D CAD scanner? This way you can save hours building 3D models by instead scanning real objects in and getting the files automatically. Anything you can think to scan can that way become a 3D image for your designs.
The Right Approach
While you evaluate and decide which software and what hardware to purchase, you also need to think about how you approach designing your digital properties, and here the right attitudes can make a huge difference.
When it comes to designing digital properties such as web design, or design for marketing material, remember that less is very often more. Minimalism is very in vogue at the moment – particularly on the net – and the good news for you is that this decreases the amount of work you can do. Instead of looking for design flourishes you can add to your pages and layouts, instead think about the design elements you can remove to create a cleaner and more modern looking page and to save yourself time!
This is something that ‘indie game’ developers do very well. They can’t compete with the 3D graphics of blockbuster games, so instead they choose quirky and minimalist graphics styles – working all in one colour, or using silhouettes, or going for a purposefully ‘retro’ appearance. It’s easier for them, but actually just as eye-catching.
Finally, don’t be afraid to outsource. While it’s nice to do things yourself where possible, think about the time factor and obviously the end result. If there is an outside resource that designs digital properties more efficiently, at a value cost, then it’s only vanity to do it yourself.
by Kristina Parker | Mar 24, 2014 | Interactive, Latest
Web design doesn’t only mean website design. If you’re creating any digital product, be that a website, an app or even an eBook, then you may find that the temptation is there to rush out your final product and to ‘make do’ with work that doesn’t represent your very best. The problem is that it’s all too easy to create these products thanks to the wealth of great tools that take a lot of the grunt work out of our hands. With WordPress it’s a simple matter to create a web design for your website by just tweaking a couple of settings, which can make it all-too-easy to just settle for whatever look you stumble on first.
But if that’s your attitude then you need to be careful. When it comes to making a great impression online, the devil is very much in the details. Cutting corners on our web design can have a big impact on the overall appearance of your site while tweaking even the tiniest factor can make everything look more professional and more impressive – which translates as more visitors, more sales and more profit.
If you want to make your digital product look its very best with just a few minor web design tweaks, here are some of the things that you should consider first…
Animation
If you have a website or an app then it may have some basic animations for opening new pages or closing elements etc. If you’ve implemented animations like this at all then congratulations – you’re already one step ahead of much of the competition.
At the same time though, if you’ve just settled for a stock animation then this might not be making the very most of what you could potentially do. Case in point – have you considered an ‘ease-in’ or an ‘ease-out’? These describe slight changes to animations in which the objects accelerate and decelerate at the start and end of the movement. There’s another aspect to consider too called the ‘overshoot’ in which the object will travel slightly too fast – almost excitedly – and then be forced to ‘bounce back’ into the correct position. While these changes may seem almost imperceptible, they can actually make a massive difference to the overall sheen of the app or website by giving it that professional polish and lending your elements almost a ‘personality’ of their own.You can add more elements to an animation too. Why fade in or come in from the left when you can do both?
Orientation
Here’s something you’ve probably never considered: which way are the images on your website facing? In other words, if your image had a face, would it be looking in at the text, or away off to the edge? You might not realize this, but if you look at professional sites and magazines it’s always the former: all elements point in towards the content which has the effect of bringing the viewers’ eyes in that way too. Again, you probably wouldn’t think it would make that much difference, but now that we’ve been trained to expect this setup, your site will look less professional unless it features it.
Rounded Edges
Here’s a brilliant example of a very small design element having a big difference – rounding the edges of your boxes. Even doing this ever-so-slightly will again show attention to detail and give your app, website or book the appearance of being customized by a professional team and not just created in a ‘cookie cutter’ conveyor belt type manner. Add custom edges to your CSS elements and you’ll notice instantly how much better everything looks.
The Date
We’ll end on a really easy one: if your copyright notice still has the date from two years ago on it, then it’s pretty important that you fix that to show your site hasn’t been forgotten. Otherwise the money you spend on those ad slots will be wasted. Would you buy from a site that couldn’t be bothered to update its copyright notice to the right year?
by Kristina Parker | Feb 27, 2014 | E-Commerce, Latest
Anyone who builds an e-commerce store can’t expect to make money without a good fight. I’ve shown them some website design tips they should implement if they want to increase their chances of making a lot of sales.
Anyone can build an e-commerce store because there are so many templates available these days. It’s a lot harder when you want people to hand over their hard-earned money because they won’t do it. The design of your website could make all the difference and we’re going to look at a few things you should include. By implementing these great tips you won’t definitely become rich, but you will stand a better chance of making money from your site.
Professional looking photos
Nobody is going to buy something if your photos don’t look professional because of two obvious reasons. The first reason is that you won’t look trustworthy, which I know isn’t going to come as much of a shock to you. The second reason is that people want to see exactly what they’re buying and a quality photo lets them look at the product in more detail. They also need to be large enough for people to see them, and hopefully you have more than one for each product.
A quality logo
You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on a logo. You don’t even need to spend anything on a logo if you can design one yourself, but whatever you do it must look good. If you don’t have a quality logo it’s going to be hard for people to take you seriously. Would you take yourself seriously if your logo looked like it was designed by a child? Don’t think it needs to look fancy because it doesn’t. You just need to make sure it doesn’t look unprofessional.
A visible shopping cart
Anyone who is going to buy something from the store will add a product to their shopping cart. You don’t want them to have to go looking for it when they want to proceed to the checkout. It should be in a prominent place above the fold and it should be large enough to stand out. Hopefully it also looks good because this is the part where people do actually need to type in their bank details. You don’t want them to get scared because your shopping cart looks too amateur.
Add social media buttons
A lot of purchases come from people reaching your site through social media channels, so it’s obvious you should have some buttons in your site that people can click on. It doesn’t cost you any money to have them there, but they will bring you in a few sales somewhere down the line. If you don’t want to have too many extra things on your site you might just want to stick to the popular ones like Facebook and Twitter.
Include a phone number
People actually notice a big increase in their conversion rate when they include a phone number. This means you will need a help-desk unless you want to do everything yourself, but most people won’t call the number anyway. They just want to see it there because it will feel like the website is a real business and not something a scammer stuck on the internet when they were bored one day. It also needs to be somewhere people can see it straight away.
Tell them about your USP
If you have a unique selling proposition you want to tell them on the homepage where they will see it easily because it could sway their buying decision. If someone offered free shipping wouldn’t you like to know before you tried to buy their product? If a company gives some of their proceeds to charity it’s also something you would like to know. Work out your USP and incorporate it into the design because you will see much better results.
by Kristina Parker | Feb 5, 2014 | Interactive, Latest
The app market has provided something of a gold rush for a while now. By providing millions of users with a way to quickly and easily download any piece of software, iTunes and the Google Play Store have created huge opportunities for programmers and marketers and this has led to an influx of games, productivity apps and more which have made a lot of people very wealthy. 
But while there is still a lot of money to be made here, unfortunately it has become increasingly difficult to actually make that money due to an increasing amount of competition. These days it is a challenge to stand out from the crowd and so it has become necessary to try applying some more conventional forms of marketing and advertising in order to turn an app into a verified hit. Here we will look at some of the unique ways you can promote and app and turn it into a hit.
Price Drops
There are many sites online that exist entirely to inform buyers of recent sales and price drops for popular apps. These sites work by scanning the various app stores automatically and highlighting the biggest price drops, and that means that you can easily get noticed by simply having a big sale. This can then lead to a huge increase in downloads for a short while as people will rush to your product and more will be made aware of it. Of course you’ll earn less per-sale, but normally this still results in an increase in profits for a while at least.
Team-Ups
Another way to promote your application is to somehow team up with a blogger or YouTube channel which has access to a large audience. This way you can offer their viewers an exclusive discount for example, or you can offer to promote their channel through your app in exchange for them doing the same for you. 
The problem of course is getting those people with a big platform to respond to your unsolicited e-mails rather than just deleting them. The solution though is a simple matter of carefully choosing the right person to contact in the first place. Specifically, you should be contacting people who have a large platform, but who are still at a similar level to you in terms of success – or ideally even lower. What you need to do, is to find someone new and preferably young, who will still be excited to be contacted by a big ‘app developer’. They will be enthusiastic and their site will benefit from the deal, but at the same time they’ll also have the large audience that can help you increase downloads.
Better yet, by approaching smaller outlets first, you can actually end up gaining coverage on larger sites/in larger magazines. That’s because these often look to smaller outlets in order to get breaking news, and once they’ve seen it covered well once, they’ll be more likely to take an interest than if you approached them directly.
Advertising 
While many people don’t consider advertising for mobile apps, this can still actually be a highly successful way to get more downloads and especially if you do it right. Even if those ads don’t lead directly to downloads, they can increase awareness which can boost exposure and help you to get more users. There are many great ways to advertise for an app. Advertising on internet TV for instance can work well as it allows your ad to be seen by people who are online and able to immediately follow a link to a download. Likewise you can advertise through Facebook with highly targeted ads, or through Google AdWords. Another option though is to go the ‘old fashioned’ route and try advertising through more traditional mediums – such as magazine or television. Here you face less competition and that can make your app more memorable. Better yet, if you should get a review or advert in a magazine that specialises in your niche (a writing app in a writing magazine for instance), then you will have a direct ‘route to market’ that will lead to lots of new downloads.
by Kristina Parker | Jan 20, 2014 | Design, Latest
If you’ve been on the internet long enough, for something a lot more sensible than cat videos and pointless Facebook updates (say for instance, for making some real money) then you’ve also- on multiple occasions- come to that moment where you’ve had to get a website for yourself. Now, getting a website that actually works wonders for your business AND manages to survive the regular spate of Google updates is no cakewalk. You need a pro to do the best for your website. Luckily, it’s easy for you to find a good web developer, but how do you get the one you can trust?
One simple test is by making him discuss things that no other web developer would want to, like these four things…
You can’t go ahead without a plan
If you’re going for anything major, you need a plan. Many business owners think of their website as a whole different entity, as opposed to considering it a major aspect of the marketing strategy. Therefore, it doesn’t really make sense for you to just put random or no content up for users to see. Web design actually varies based on its purpose. So, obviously marketing plan counts. After all, it is the one thing that gives you solid direction. A good web developer understands this, and expects you to let him in on the plan too. This will help him come up with a more relevant design, which is perfectly in line with your goals and objectives.Talk to him about your target audience and the kind of growth you expect from the website. Don’t shy away from deep discussions about your plans with the developer.
Bad content
While the whole ‘Content is King’ thing may be over-hyped, there is a reason it has become the hype. Unique, relevant and original content is what lends your site the credibility that keeps people coming back to it. If the content is bad, no masterstroke of web design is going to save it. And if your web designer/developer isn’t telling you that already, you’re pretty much being taken for a ride. Agreed that the web developer isn’t really a big expert on the subject firsthand, however, he’s seen enough of web content to be able to distinguish the good ones from the bad. Moreover, publishing the content on a website is a major part of the web design. So, the bad content will eventually translate into bad design.
You will want to change
Nothing on the internet is stable or constant. Trends are changing on a daily basis and people are constantly on the lookout for something new and fresh. As a business, you have to constantly stay on your toes, so that you’re not lost in the crowd and clutter out there. This will require you to make some changes in the future. You wouldn’t want to stay out of tune with your audience. You need to maintain your appeal. Plus, somewhere down the line, your objectives and goals will change, so will your needs. Imprisoning your website in the last century with technology that cannot be altered or changed is one of the first things a good web developer will prevent you from doing.
Demand feedback
You’re not going anywhere without this. Yes, you may have a specific vision in mind. And yes, it’s for YOUR business, but don’t forget that you are putting it out for the world to see. It’s about the users- your target audience. And it is important that your website doesn’t fall flat on its face due to lack of appeal. This is why feedback helps; it lets you know what the other side is thinking. No developer is going to let you go live with a website without getting adequate feedback first.
The secret behind the success of any collaboration is clear and open communication, and of course, great attention to detail. Stick to these, and you should be sorted. Good luck!
