User experience refers to how a user feels when going through your website and the kind of responses they might have, whether physical, emotional or intellectual. Out of their interaction with the website and the kind of experience they get, they will decide whether or not take the intended action.

The intended action is always the main objective of setting up the website, and this could be either to sell a product, collect email addresses or share content. Every website, therefore, should be designed with the potential users in mind, and it should anticipate the kind of interaction expected from the user and ensure that the design has been aligned to meet the user’s expectations.

User experience and search engine optimization

In the recent years, Google, the major search engine today, updated its algorithm to factor in the user experience when determining the ranks of websites. Google always has always stressed to developers and online marketers on the need for quality content, which in turn will lead to great user experience. When users land on your website, they are hoping to find something which they were looking for on the internet.

If they fail to find it, they will quickly navigate away from your website leading to high bounce back rates. If Google notices this in your websites, it will interpret that your site has an awful user experience, and this is why people are moving away the moment they get there. Your site will then be given lower rankings because it is not offering a good experience for the users by providing quality content.

With the lower rankings, you miss an awesome opportunity to get loads of free and targeted traffic to your website. Therefore, user content should always one of your top concerns when making websites to enhance your search engine optimization efforts.

Mobile websites and user experience

The number of people accessing the internet with mobile devices has outgrown the number of people using desktop devices to access the internet. It implies that if your website isn’t accessible to these kinds of users, then you will be limiting the viewership of your website to the desktop users alone. In this manner, you will be using a great opportunity to take a share of the humongous mobile traffic for the growth of your website and online business.

It is due to user experience that you will be compelled to make a mobile friendly site take of mobile users as well. If user attempt to access your website via the mobile devices but they are not able to, they will simply give up and search for a similar website that will be displayed on their mobile devices. This is another reason for you take user experience seriously in web design.

User experience and lead nurturing

One of the goals of a website is to collect leads for future email marketing. Through user experience, marketers are able to personalize the lead capture process for effective results. It made the potential leads feel more important and appreciated thus breaking any barriers they might have had before. The eventual results of this won’t be just increased lead capture but also increased conversions since the potential customers will feel less skeptic about taking the desired action.

Ease of use of the website by the users

Website usability is important for the success of any online venture. Usability encompasses various items that still points back to user experience. A good website should be easily found on the internet, and it should also have useful, desirable, accessible, credible, and valuable information. These are the core determinants of good user experience. When a website has all of these, it will give users easy time in navigating the content, the download speeds will also be high, meaning that users won’t have to wait for a long time and it will also be easy for the users to search and find the various content they are looking for. Eventually, users will enjoy using the website each and every time thus helping in building the brand authority of the website.

User experience is a very extensive subject due to its importance to the success of websites online. The crucial thing is to take time and investigate thoroughly on the user experience before setting out to develop a website. It will be a waste of time to design a website that users won’t enjoy using.

Learn how to avoid common wordpress mistakes here!

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The fact that it is intuitive and easy to use makes it favorable for even persons who have no knowledge of web design or coding. This, together with the fact that it is friendly to the search engines usually makes it the first choice platform for most people just getting into the world of web design.

You should, however, note that the ease of use of the platform is not a guarantee that every website making process will be smooth. It is upon the developer to adhere to strict web design practices and guidelines to ensure that they make the websites in the right way.

Related to this also, there are certain common mistakes that WordPress web designers are fond of making, and these ends up jeopardizing the quality of their works. Watching out for these mistakes and avoiding them makes the design process easier and leads to good stable WordPress websites. Use these tips to avoid the common WordPress mistakes to become more proficient in WordPress website design-:

Use a reliable web hosting company

Unless you are using the free hosting services provided by WordPress, you are likely to self-host your WordPress website. One of the common WordPress mistakes that people do is choosing the wrong host for their websites. The hosting company is of crucial importance to the operation of your website since they will determine the uptime of your site in the Internet.

You should always use reliable web hosting companies with little or no downtimes so that you are guaranteed that your website will be live for most of the times. The last thing you want is for your e-commerce website to go down when you are accepting orders because the sites are not hosted by a reliable hosting company.

Use updated themes and plugins

Themes and plugin help in extending the functionality of the core WordPress engine. They give you the ability to do more than what the base code of WordPress would have done. However, it is regrettable to note that the use of WordPress themes and plugins is a very common WordPress mistake being committed by even some of the experienced designers.

While using the themes, it is imperative that you use the most recent versions. Using outdated versions will hinder you from reaping the maximum potential and most importantly, outdated themes and plugins can provide backdoors for hackers and other malicious people who might want to hurt your website.

Make the website mobile friendly

Ever since the surge in growth of mobile traffic, it is important for every website to be mobile friendly. A mobile friendly website simply refers to a website that can render properly in mobile devices such as Smartphone and tablets. The main reason for making your WordPress website mobile friendly is to take advantage of the immense mobile traffic for the growth of your website.

If the site can’t be accessed via the mobile devices, it implies that you will miss out on a huge chunk of the mobile traffic, and this will curtail the growth of your website. Be careful not to fall a victim of this common WordPress mistake.

Change the permalinks

One of the greatest advantages that WordPress have over the other CMS in the industry is its custom link structure. WordPress gives you the ability to do away with the default link structure to a more customizable one which is not only easily recognizable to human but also loved by the search engines. Changing the link structure is a breeze, but it is one of the common WordPress mistakes made by many people. Always be sure to change link structures for better search engine rankings which will ultimately lead to more traffic.

Back up your site regularly

With all the hackers on the Internet and the security loops available in WordPress, every site is vulnerable to getting hacked. To stay safe, you need to make it a habit of backing up your website on a regular basis. This is the only way to save time and valuable resources should you wake up one morning and find that someone has hacked your website. You can use backup features provided by your hosting company.

Alternatively, you can make use of backup plugins which will give you the ability to back automatically up your website on a regular basis. This is a common WordPress mistake that saves you a lot of time and pain when your site is hacked

Remove the default tagline

It is always disgusting to see a live website still showing the default WordPress tagline of “Just Another WordPress Site.” Avoid this common WordPress mistake by replacing it with your tagline.

Learn if your logo design is adaptive here!

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Logo design is a skill and profession just like any other career out there. Every designer aspires to use their skills to grow as professionals and also as a source of income. The choice to give away logo for free or offer free logo design services is thus a prerogative of the service provider, in which case, it should never happen. The following are some of the reasons to discourage all graphic designers from giving away logos for free-:

It takes work to design a logo

Even though there are plenty of free logo design tools that can be used to create good looking logos within minutes, it takes more than tools for the creation of stellar logos. A considerable amount of time is expended in planning on how to create a versatile logo that will attract the attention of the target audience. And since time is money, giving away logo for free is just like giving away money or throwing your valuable time to the drains. You should therefore never think about free logo design.

You went to school to become a professional graphic designer

It is true that there are self-taught graphic designers, but this is just an exception and not the rule. Most of the professional designers attended some training or schooling to learn how to design professional logos. Such training definitely cost some money, commitment, and time. Hence, there is no logical reason to undergo all that only to come and give free logo designs. You shall have wasted your time and undermined the sacrifices you made to become a graphics designer.

The equipment and software used don’t come for free

The tools of the trade in logo design are not available for free. You need a computer and various software to make professional logos. You will have to spend money to acquire all these. Even if you rely on free tools from the Internet, you will still need resources to access the internet connection, and these will cost you money. Why, therefore, should you think about free logo design services?

Designing a professional logo is not a child’s play

The process of designing a professional logo takes time and a great deal of creative imagination. You need to think about the colors, fonts, target audience, images, etc. then bring them together to form a design. It is a skill that is continuously improved, and not everyone can comprehend and learn how to make professional logos. Footballers, athletes, doctors, Engineers are all paid for their skills, why should a graphic designer give away a logo for free?

You need to be paid for your experience

Perhaps you can give away a logo for free when you are still an amateur trying to attract clients and get their feet wet with graphics design. But for the seasoned professional, you have spent thousands of hours practicing and mastering your craft until now you can be called a professionals. It not that you started to design logos yesterday so that you give free logo designs. If every professional is paid for their experience, why is a graphics designer specializing in logos not compensated commensurately?

Success in your business will build on the logo

The logo is one of the most powerful marketing arsenals any business can have. Every success you get will be due to effective branding and marketing, of which the logo will play an instrumental role. Due to this, does it make any sense to offer logo design when it has the potential to take the business or the organization to greater heights of success?

Your logo will be there for many years

As the business grows, so does the brand, hence the logo. It implies that your logo will not be in use for just a short period, unless you are thinking of rebranding too soon. It will be there for as long as the business is in operation, continuing to sell your brand to all that sees it. Due to this, offering logo design services will be unfair since it will be beneficial to the business for many more years to come, yet you give it away from nothing.

However, there are certain cases when a designer might be tempted to offer free logo design services. For instance, when you are new in the market, and you are trying to build your portfolio, you can use free logo design as a low hanging fruit to win first customers and build your portfolio. Additionally, you can give free logo design services as an incentive to clients who purchase other graphic design services from you. Also, you can give away a logo for free is you decide to give back to the society by designing a professional logo to help a charity in furthering their course. However, you should never give away a logo for free.

Use this previous article to learn more about protecting the work you produce!

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Survival in the graphic design industry can be elusive if you don’t have a portfolio to show your work. Clients will in most cases want to have a look at your previous designs to gauge your competency and suitability of you doing them a great job. Without a portfolio, you will have nothing to show, and it will be tough to land a gig in this highly lucrative and equally skeptical industry.

The good news, however, is that it is possible to have a graphic design portfolio from scratch that you can use it to market your design services. This is ideal when you are new in the industry and still struggling to win new clients. It is also applicable when you have been in the industry for some time, but you need to attract high-end customers who will pay more for your services. Use the tips given below to build your graphic design portfolio from nothing.

Start with what you have

As a new designer interested in building a portfolio from scratch, you need not look further than to begin with yourself. Your main reason for building a portfolio is to market your design skills to get a stream of clients for continued work. Since you are essentially running businesses, start by creating various marketing materials for your business then display them on your online profile.

For instance, you can make business cards, logo, brochures, and marketing flyers for your graphic design business then tell people that you are the one who made them when displaying them on your profile. Though you may not have handled any paid projects, potential clients will see what you did for your brand if they are convinced, they may be interested in hiring your services. This is the easiest way to start building your graphic design portfolio from scratch.

Redesign other projects

Your aim here in building graphic design portfolio from scratch is to display your skills and what you can do when given a real assignment. To do this, redesign other works, adding in your unique design intuition to make such look fresh and unique. You can then display such redesigns on your website or portfolio to show to the potential clients. This won’t just expose your artistic prowess but also will speed up the process of building your graphic design portfolio from scratch.

Target poor designs and make them look great

The other way to hasten the process of building your graphic design portfolio from scratch is to target local business with poorly designed logos and other marketing materials. Make a list of such businesses and dedicate your time to making their designs look great. Once you finish, approach them and show them that you can improve on their designs and give them a better image to the clients.

If your work is good, most of them will be pleased and might consider hiring your services. With this approach, you will have chances of landing real clients while at the same time adding to your graphic design portfolio paid project you did to your customers.

Volunteer free services for the very first clients

Offering your services for free is another method you can use to create a graphic design portfolio from scratch. With this method, you agree to offer free services for a limited number of clients, especially those who come first or those who order multiple services. If you already have some cool designs in your portfolio, clients will be tempted to take in your offer of free design services.

Make perfect designs for these clients; add them to your portfolio. Besides this method helping you to create your graphic design portfolio from scratch, you will increase your chances of getting hired by the same clients if they are pleased with your work.

Consider Community involvement

The community is a great non-digital dimension you can use in building your graphic design portfolio from scratch. For instance, you can create a poster for your local meet up group or a church event or just about anything that will be taking place around you. Once done, all you have to do is to include the piece of work in your portfolio and make reference to the community activity. This is an awesome strategy if you are targeting local clients with your services.

Additionally, you may find other participants in the event who might be pleased with your design and consider using your services for their marketing materials. These will be good clients for you since you are in the same group already; they will feel more comfortable in dealing with you as opposed to approaching new designers for their design works. When used wisely, community involvement can make building your graphic design on steroids due to the exposure the trust you can get.

Take some inspiration from these recognizable brands while building from scratch!

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