Auto Infographic: How technology can make us all designers (sort of)
The bit I actually enjoyed was watching a dozen marketers design their first Infographic. They were awesome: creative, insightful and surprisingly good looking. It got me thinking: should we, an original agency that does this kind of thing for a living, really be teaching our clients the thanks to do it? How can we justify our fees if anyone can produce something similar, for free, themselves? Fortunately, my fears were allayed quickly, as Chris stepped up and showed them one he’d prepared earlier. A chronic ‘Ooooohhhhh…’ went round the room. His years of coaching, technical know-how and inventive thinking blew them away. So now that I don’t fear this democratised creativity, I feel entirely comfortable sharing my opinion on the DIY design tools we played within preparation for the workshop.
Visage
Visage was the first ‘content creation’ site I discovered on in my search around for design templates and Infographic. It’s built by a Californian agency that produces lovely datav is (the visual representation of data) work themselves and who share good intel through their emails and white papers. Visage is made primarily for social media posts, so if you would like to style your own tweet-sized graphics otherwise you would like some attractive charts or tables that look better than Excel, then this site will serve you well.
PhotoADKing
PhotoADKing is that the Graphic Designer Software for any media with best graphic design tool for your marketing, advertising, and printing services. 10000+ stunning design templates for different platforms and marketing ideas for little business. Graphic PhotoADKing also has social media templates like Instagram Post Templates, Instagram Post Creator, Instagram Post Maker, other social media templates with easy-to-use features for everyone. This might help in saving huge amount of money in future, which is why it stands out as the most effective tool among others.
Canva
Canva is analogous to Visage but it’s made in Sydney and has way more variety so we’re bound to prefer it more! Canva has many templates to choose on from, plus you’ll easily resize the graphic to fit your need. I produced my LinkedIn background wall to the right dimensions in seconds, instead of bugging our studio to do to thereto it on behalf of me. In truth, most of their templates are for personal or consumer purposes, and which I did have some trouble saving and downloading my designs during my first session, but overall it absolutely was rather fun.
Piktochart
Piktochart is that the applying we used during our workshop. For an audience of corporate communicators it had the proper mixture of business-related templates, from reports and infographics to online presentations. Our group of marketers got stuck in quickly which all of them found a template to suit the wireframes they’d sketched. In the Pro version there are more lovely templates, rather like the one above, plus you’ll download at print quality if you would like to use them offline. So if you’re a business one that needs something designed fast and cheap and you don’t have a designer to the touch, Piktochart seems best-in-class to me.
Adobe CC
Creative Cloud is a compilation of 20+ desktop, PC and Mobile Applications and services for photography, design, video, web, UX and more. Now you can take your ideas to new places with Photoshop on the iPad, draw and paint with Adobe Fresco and design for 3D and AR. Adobe Creative Cloud gives you the world’s best creative apps and services so you can make anything you can imagine, wherever you’re inspired. This service will help you provide the better result and effective work for your projects.
Tableau
Tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way we use data to solve problems – empowering people and organizations to make the most of their data. Tableau disrupted business intelligence with intuitive, visual analytics for everyone. This data visualisation will help you to get accurate results and also the analytics are intended to work as per algorithmic function.
Specialist Apps
As you’d expect, there are many niche applications to be found at the highest of your Google search, possess some radical, interactive chart types if you’d wish to embed some complex datavis into your website. Timeline JS, because the name suggests, could also be a tool for embedding timelines into your website, a task I’m sure most communications teams are asked to complete at some point. Similarly, Story map JS enables you to plot your stories on a Google Map, which again is great if you’d prefer to signify off your company facilities or a physical journey online. There are many other mapping, graphing and visualisation tools, so my advice here is to Google your needs and let the appliance come to you.
Business Intelligence Tools
At the alternative end of the scale, if you’re looking to handle large, complex or unstructured datasets, then you’ll probably be entering the jargon-heavy world of business intelligence (BI) tools. Again there are heaps to decide on from, as detailed during this ironic scatter graph from Gartner (the irony being that their data visualisation about leading data visualisation tools is an awful piece of information visualisation).
From what I hear around the corporate locker rooms, Tableau is that foremost generally adopted and easiest to use by people who don’t have an analytical background, but investment decisions during this realm are often driven by your existing IT stack and also the way well the tools work together.
In conclusion, it’s not surprising that designers get nervous about the arrival of tools rather like the Grid, which uses AI to style your website for you, but the fact is that robots won’t remove our creative jobs. Not just yet.
To me, it’s barely like owning a guitar. It’d look great hanging on my wall, or feel nice in my hands, which I actually would adore one for my birthday, but owning a decent guitar doesn’t mean I can make great music.
Is a Designer or Developer Required for Your Website
A website is a must-have requirement for companies in today’s age and time. It’s the online home of your company, the foundation of your digital marketing strategy, and maybe the most effective lead generation tool on the internet.
How can you be sure, though, that you’re obtaining the exact site you need? What’s the difference between working with a web designer and working with a web developer? People frequently get the two sorts of website building specialists mixed up, and it’s understandable.
Although design and development sound like they could be used interchangeably to represent creation, there are some important distinctions to be made. The designer and the developer each bring their own set of abilities to the table and work on distinct aspects of the website. So, whether you should hire the best web developer or web design company in New York for your website, you will get the answer here.
What exactly is a web designer?
Simply said, web designers will concentrate on the aesthetics of the website, also known as the front end. They’re in charge of the website’s overall look and feel, not simply graphically, but also in terms of navigation and usability. They will assist you in completing the display, ensuring that each page has all of the visual elements it requires, and creating the aesthetic to be applied across the entire page using a variety of tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and others. While they may not require the technical ability of web developers, they will almost certainly require and bring some coding experience of their own.
What does it mean to be a web developer?
The nitty-gritty of how a website operates is significantly more important to web developers than how it looks or feels. The pages are designed and built from the ground up by web developers. Varied developers have different responsibilities in this process, but they all collaborate with a design team. Web developers frequently have some aesthetic design experience, which can aid in the implementation of page prototypes, but they rarely have the complete, polished approach to graphic and animation design that web designers possess.
Variations in web designers
Even within the two broadly defined categories of “website building services,” there are numerous considerations to be made. Before you hunt for a web designer or a web developer, you should have a clear idea of the skills you require.
Variations in web developers
There are various sorts of web developers in New York, just as there are various types of web designers. Choosing the correct one comes down to the level of experience you require. Back-end web developers, for example, work with back-end development technologies that can be utilized to build a variety of websites. Front end developers deal with languages like CSS and HTML to create things like plug-ins and applications that visitors can see and interact with. Web developers who work on both the front-end and back-end of a website are referred to as full-stack developers.
How to choose the right one?
So, when is hiring a web designer the best option? In general, whether you already have a website or are utilizing a website construction tool to do some of the work but want it to look professional and bespoke, you’ll want one of the top web designers on your team. They’re there to assist with the implementation of new designs, the improvement of layouts and navigation, the updating of the site’s graphics and branding, the updating or editing of pictures, and the addition or editing of videos.
On either hand, if you need to establish a website from the ground up to satisfy specific requirements for customer or employee use, a web developer can assist you in creating the perfect website you require. This involves adding new features, activities, and plugins, developing websites and mobile apps, generating contact forms, troubleshooting hosting and server difficulties, and making technical changes to page loading time, security, and so on. If you require a special type of website, such as a bespoke content management system or ecommerce platform, a back-end web developer can assist you in making the necessary adjustments.
A final word:
You’ll want to figure out which one best meets your demands before you start developing your website. If you need someone to create a custom website from the ground up, you’ll almost certainly require a web developer. However, if you already have the site up and running but need assistance with the user interface and user experience, you should hire a web designer instead. Finding the proper professional is crucial to ensuring that your website is up and running.
You must make this decision carefully as it is going to impact the performance of your search engine rankings as well. Without a proper landing page, no SEO Company can yield fruitful results.
How to design a unique website for your business
A great website is one that connects you to a greater number of customers. It is how you expand the reach of your business long before you are ever ready to open up another branch or office. When you first start out, regardless of the size or scope of your business, one of the first things you need is to create a unique, easy-to-use website that works to bring customers back again and again. With this guide, you’ll have a better idea of how to design it and how to bring it to life:
First, Find a Great Web Design Company
Though it is possible to set up a beautiful-looking website with a content management system and a theme, it will not be unique. Anyone can buy a website theme, and though you can customize it, the effect just will not be the same. If you can design a website that is unique, both in looks and in experience, you will already have made your mark. A great way to do this is to hire one of the best web design companies in Birmingham. You want an agency that can design your website, design your mobile website, and design it all with responsiveness built in. Ideally, that company should provide maintenance services and SEO and marketing services to help you lift your website off the ground.
Explore Websites to Draw Ideas
While a great web designer will likely have many ideas of their own, it never hurts to have examples of what you want and features you have seen that you believe could work. The important thing, however, is to work with your web designer. Not every feature you see will be worth the cost, and they may surprise you with ideas you have yet to think about.
Choose a Brand Color Scheme
Color schemes are an easy way to connect your branding across channels. It is also how you can convey more about your brand in just a look. Invest in some color theory and pick out colors that say the right message and that work well together.
Pick a Set of Fonts to Use Throughout Your Business
Your business should use the same fonts. Your logo font, your header font, and your text font. These don’t have to be from the same family, but they need to be consistent and always legible. Remember that you will have customers who have visual impairments, and being able to read your content easily is a must.
Create a Brand Voice
Your brand voice is how your business sounds. It needs to be consistent; it needs to be in line with your image, and it needs to be engaging. Develop a voice and practice it with all of your employees to always sound like the same person is speaking.
Consider How You Can Offer Value Online
Your website needs to be so much more than a pretty digital page. It needs to have purpose. Consider how you can add value to keep your customers returning. This can be through a blog, it can be through special sales or limited-edition runs, or it can be done by hosting events (both in-person and digital). The options you use will be unique to you and a great draw for your business.
5 Reasons Why You Should Optimize Your Landing Pages
Wondering how to optimize your landing pages to improve conversions? Here in this post, we will look into some reasons why you should optimize your key campaign pages.
In this modern-day digital world where attention span is decreasing more and more, the ones who can capture consumers’ attention best in a blink of an eye wins. That’s why a targeted page is your ticket to a digital marketing campaign’s success.
A landing page is a standalone page, where visitors will “land” right after they click a link from your social media, email, or any ads that will direct them to you. It’s the face of your operation. Its sole purpose is Call to Action.
It’s where your visitors decide whether or not they will commit to your service/product and a place where you can convert the visitors into actual consumers that use your service/product. It’s where decision-making happens.
This is why having the opt-in page is of utmost importance for generating leads. If you are not familiar with website development or coding, you could use a landing page builder to achieve this. With a dozen of page builders out there, it is very important that you choose the best landing page builder among them that meets your particular requirements.
To adapt to your target market, you need to improve your page and change it accordingly to suit your market’s needs and taste. This is where optimization comes in – conversion rate optimization is the process of enhancing and improving elements of your key page to increase conversion rates.
Here are 5 reasons you need to optimize your landing page
Exponential Growth of mobile phone users
It was found in a recent study that among all available digital devices, mobile phones are the most preferable in the world and the majority of adults own a mobile phone with a median range of 53% worldwide. This means that when given a choice, most adults will pick mobile phones as their main digital devices.
Optimizing your pages for mobile phones means that you’re catering to the majority of the available market. Which is something that all businesses should aspire to do.
Mobile devices are where transactions happen
Another important finding is that not only are people using mobile devices to browse and socialize, but the majority of adults are also now using mobile phones for transactions.
Mobile devices were found to have captured more than 50% of total online purchase transactions.
This goes to show you the importance of optimizing for mobile devices. Because people will most definitely be more at ease and inclined to go through with the transaction.
Most squeeze pages have a low conversion rate
According to a course, most campaign pages have a conversion rate (or conversion into a call-to-action rate) of lower than 10%. This is the majority of businesses. This is because most businesses do not optimize their core lead generation pages, and just let it stick out there on the web.
The good news is, you can set yourself apart by improvising and highlighting USPs so that you can have an advantage and a much better conversion rate than your idle competitors.
Because in the end, those who will get the best conversion rate will win the digital marketing competition.
Sometimes, even small hacks can improve the performance of a particular page. For example, Spectrum Inc increased Harrington Movers’ landing page conversion rates by just replacing stock images with better images.
More transactions happen on the inside pages compared to a website
In a study done to compare conversion rates of home pages with targeted pages, it was concluded that lead generation pages gain 48% more conversion rates compared to those who use home pages.
This highlights the significance of what an optimized page can do for you, and why you need to focus more effort on creating a high converting page by optimizing it.
More people own multiple digital devices
Nowadays, most people not only own one type of digital device to access the internet and to access your website for that matter. They own an average of 2 or 3 devices now: mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. All three have different specifications and thus need optimization to suit their screen compatibility.
When your lead generation page is not optimized for different digital devices, it will not load properly and presents a hurdle for your visitors to make the call to action. If it is not optimized and is loading poorly, over 40% of people will just step away and close down the page.
There goes your conversion rate! Make sure that does not happen to you by having an optimized landing page.
Those were our 5 reasons why you should optimize your landing page. What are you waiting for? Optimize that page and watch your business grow!
Tips to consider when designing a website
It involves many things to design an attractive website that will offer good services, including how it functions, its appearance to navigation and coding integrity. Web designer Auckland does more than that; they always work as a team to produce websites found in search engines, engage customers, and increase conversions. This can be so daunting, but fortunately, there are various tips you can consider as a web designer when designing a unique user experience that encourages viewers to turn into loyal customers. Some of these tips to consider involves
- Selecting a domain and host: Good domain names such as google and yahoo speaks a lot while saying less. A domain name has to be reflecting your brand voice accurately for it to be too memorable and be almost impossible to misspell. It is very key to find a perfect and right name for your brand since incorporating a combination of SEO, simple spelling and identity of the brand into domain name results in greater opportunities of being placed on the search engine results. During your comparison of hosting packages, always consider the nature of your website and business; this is very key. Always question yourself: Will, your website, be media-rich with many photos, videos, and presentations? Are you having technical support in-house or need reliable, responsive support from your hosting provider and many others? Remember to research the company’s reviews on its performance on social media and third party websites before coming up with the final say.
- Create a clean design: When developing a website, professionals at custom web design agency will always remember that it’s essential to create a clean, attractive design. Having a quality design makes it looks very appealing and easy to read with intuitive navigation. When the design is clean, viewers can concentrate on the value of your brand and content instead of graphics and too many texts. In many cases, customers associate website designs with the quality of a certain company or product; therefore, a clean design is important in offering a positive user experience that will always make customers come back.
- Choose effective colour schemes: this is always very key than customers realize. Various colours can trigger emotional responses like happiness, calm or even frustration. Always put in mind your company’s niche, targeted market and branding. It does not matter what choice you have made; taking your time to research the perfect colour options will offer your visitors the best impression.
- Branding: this is key to all types of businesses, be it small or large. Your viewers’ general opinion will always depend on the design and placement of your brand logo. When you use professionally designed logos, your website will successfully attract your customer’s eyes and offers a clear picture of how your brand is unique. Always select a location that visitors can easily see, like the upper left corner where most people’s eyes start to scan a website. To continue making your brands name known by many customers, always use the same logo on packaging, print advertising and branding apparel. Customers usually acquire a memorable and integrated brand experience when they have consistent business branding.
- Consider making your website to be straightforward: customers usually search out for websites that are easy to use; therefore, easy to use website will always attract many customers interest and encourage business. This can be done by displaying products and service information in a clear and specific way. Ensure your website has all characteristics a customer would require for the site to be accessed easily.
- Minimum loading period: nothing annoys customers when looking for information online such as slow loading moments. This issue can completely piss off a customer; therefore, always testing your website ahead of time will always help you identify any loading problem that can be rectified before officially realizing your site. To maintain many customers and provide a positive customer review, always evaluate your website’s loading time from time to time once it has been launched.
- Compatibility with multiple browsers: there are many internet browsers available in the markets today, such as internet explorer, chrome, firefox, opera mini, safari, among others. This can turn out to be very frustrating to keep up with all of them. When developing and designing a website, always ensure that your website can be reached from different browsers, especially on all major browsers. Failing to this may make your business grow since your website will be excluded from a larger section of your customer base.
- Active blog: an active blog will always inform your customers about the current products, events in the company and industry-related information. Having a blog on your website is a perfect manner of connecting with them, especially when your posts encourage readers to interact with your brand. Regular updating of your blog tells customers about the values of your brand and desire to promote communication. Your brand becomes a trusted resource and an industry authority when you often offer readers fresh, helpful and engaging content.
- Linking with social media: this is a key requirement for any web developer since technology makes sharing information more convenient. A business that does not have social media integration doesn’t take advantage of what has been likened to the modern-day world. Social media offers a platform where customers can promote your brand, offer reviews, and update your company’s latest updates. Link your website to social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and many others.
- Navigation: Always consider having a website that is straightforward and easy to navigate to keep your customers returning. If a website is confusing and technical to navigate, your clients may go and never come back. Conduct an in-depth site review like a new visitor to increase your site’s efficiency and good appearance. Add site maps to improve your visitor’s ability to navigate through the site easily. You may reduce your site’s load time by streamlining navigation through the elimination of unnecessary and underperforming pages; this will also improve your brands quality online.