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If you already have a good idea of what you want a new website to look like, the next step would be to decide on the tools you’ll need to put into play to turn that vision into a reality.

  • Tools enable you to present its content in ways that will engage and captivate its audience and gain their trust.
  • Tools that will make your website perform flawlessly in all respects.

That is why choosing the right WordPress theme to get the job done is so important. You want a theme that features the page building tools and design aids that make your task far easier than anticipated.

The following 12 top WordPress themes and plugins have been selected with those purposes in mind. They will not only get the job done for you but do it better than most of the other website-building tools in the marketplace are capable of doing.

The choice is up to you. Whatever that choice may be, it should prove to be a winner.

1. BeTheme

A website-building toolkit that can boast of 40+ core features sounds like a pretty good-sized toolkit, and BeTheme is just that. In fact, this popular (200,000 sales) theme is the biggest WordPress theme of them all.

It’s unlikely you will need to put every one of these core features to use for your next project, but some will be essential, such as –

  • The Muffin Builder page builder, Admin Panel, and Shortcode Generator combine to make BeTheme easy to use, give you a ton of flexibility, and enable you to build your website without any need for coding.
  • Be’s library of shortcodes together with the many Header, Footer, and Grid options, and the new Header Builder extends your design options even more.
  • The Layout Generator will come in handy if you want to start a page from scratch.
  • You’ll love what may be the most important core feature of them all; Be’s selection of 600+ customizable pre-built websites. They cover most industry sectors and website types plus a variety of business niches.

Click on the banner to learn more.

2. Total Theme

Designed with excellence in mind, Total features an exceptional selection of tools and design aids to work with. Total is also well-known for its speed, ease of use, and the flexibility it offers its users.

  • Since you can disable any feature you want to, you won’t be distracted by or bothered with those you don’t intend to use.
  • Total’s 40+ quick import demos and one-of-a-kind theme cards are designed to get your projects off to a rapid start.
  • The Dynamic Template function is a driving force behind this WordPress theme’s remarkable flexibility.
  • You’re given a wealth of design options to work with, thanks to the live customizer and the advanced theme panel.
  • Total is a WordPress plugin and WooCommerce friendly.

Click on the banner to learn more.

3. Avada Theme

When a WordPress theme has the distinction of being the #1 best seller of all time, you can safely assume that those who created it got it right. Avada’s 450,000+ sales can’t easily be ignored.

Look closer, and you’ll see some of the many reasons behind Avada’s popularity.

  • There’s an impressive selection of one-click import demos, pre-built websites, and a wealth of supporting design elements.
  • The Fusion drag and drop builder and Fusion page and theme options enable designers to create complex websites without resorting to coding.
  • 5-star support and free updates ensure users that they will always be able to follow the latest design trends and create websites as they envision them.

Click on the banner to learn more.

4. MaxCoach – Online Courses, Personal Coaching & Education WP Theme

MaxCoach is a specialty tool that enables web designers to create an online distance learning and/or tutoring platform. This LearnPress theme was last year’s #1 coaching theme, and it will most likely be so in 2021 as well.

  • The platform is learner-centric
  • MaxCoach’s design is modern, trendy, and unique
  • Elementor is the drag and drop page builder of choice

Visit the site to see for yourself why this specialty theme has generated so much interest.

5. TheGem – Creative Multi-Purpose High-Performance WordPress Theme

TheGem, WordPress’s ultimate multiuse toolbox, gives its users:

  • A selection of more than 400 professionally-crafted pre-built multi-page and single-page websites
  • Two popular page builders – WPBakery and Elementor
  • Demos, layouts, and page sections you can mix and match to create a look that’s uniquely yours

The GemBlocks with its 300+ pre-designed section templates to speed up your workflow, plus WooCommerce layouts and design aids

6. Uncode – Creative Multiuse & WooCommerce WordPress Theme

The Uncode multi-use WordPress theme is ideal for entrepreneurs, creative individuals, agencies, and small businesses.

  • Its 80.000+ sales to date have made it a ThemeForest best-seller.
  • Features include a unique WooCommerce Custom Builder you can use to give site visitors a supreme shopping experience.

Viewing Uncode’s showcase of user-built websites is a must. Click on the banner to visit the site and prepare to be impressed.

7. Rey Theme

This highly modular popular theme is definitely worth a close look. It is simply one of the most innovative website building tools you’re likely to find on the market today,

  • Rey’s features include a library of professionally-designed templates and an imposing selection of WooCommerce site-building tools
  • It is easy to set up and easy to use
  • You will be more than satisfied with Rey’s robust performance

Rey has built-in SVG support and is user and developer-friendly.

8. Aurum – Minimalist WordPress Theme

With this multiuse minimalist WordPress theme at your fingertips, you’ll be able to create an online store that will give shoppers a fully satisfying shopping experience.

  • With Aurum, you can design megamenus to accommodate huge selections of products
  • Aurum’s page load times are super-fast, and Aurum’s pages are responsive to every screen size
  • Popular plugins are included, and all the popular WordPress plugins are supported

Click on the banner and check it out.

9. Hongo – Modern & Multipurpose WooCommerce WordPress Theme

Its trendy selections of creative design elements and ready-to-go store demos make Hongo an ideal choice for company, blogging, and eCommerce websites.

  • Premium plugins and WPBakery custom shortcodes are among the most popular of Hongo’s website-building features
  • This multipurpose theme also features an attractive selection of product-related tools that include product compare, quick view, wish lists, and product filter

You can expect and receive exceptional user support.

10. XStore – The Most Customizable WooCommerce Theme Ever

With its $39 price tag, XStore gives you more value for your money than you’ll find in any other WooCommerce theme.

  • For starters, there are 100+ good-to-go shops
  • A full Ajax shop is another popular feature
  • As is XStore’s single product page builder and its selection of product filters and display features

Check XStore out if you’re looking for a way to create an awesome online store in no time at all.

11. KnowAll – Knowledge Base Theme

Have you ever come across a FAQ page you really liked? It doesn’t happen often. 

Visitors that can’t find a good answer might decide to make a phone call (and be placed on hold). That answer is OK, but additional information would be more helpful.

With AI-based KnowAll, customers get answers 24/7, and they can search for other relevant information. They will be happier customers, which is obviously good for business.

12. Pofo – Creative Portfolio, Blog, and eCommerce WordPress Theme

Bloggers, creatives, agencies, and those looking to create an eCommerce site should give Pofo a good, hard look.

Pofo is fast, flexible, SEO optimized, and packed with useful features that include:

  • Trendy selections of pre-built design elements, ready-to-go home pages, and one-click import demo pages.
  • Premium plugins, including Revolution Slider and the WPBakery page builder.

Detailed online documentation is provided, and you’ll be more than pleased with this theme’s customer support.

A modern, fast-loading, and smoothly performing theme is what you need. It will help you create a website that will have a significantly positive impact on your business’ growth.

Themes like those presented here can do just that by enabling you to give your website the professional touch you’re looking for. You can do it without having to rely on a single line of code.

These 12 top WordPress themes are modern, trendy, and easy to work with. Trying to find the “best” of the bunch could admittedly be somewhat daunting. But, you can take comfort in the fact that you really can’t make a wrong or bad choice.

 

[– This is a sponsored post –]

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The post 12 Best WordPress Themes for 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

The new year is often packed with resolutions. Make the most of those goals and resolve to design better, faster, and more efficiently with some of these new tools and resources.

Here’s what new for designers this month.

Radix UI

Radix UI is an open-source UI component library for building high-quality, accessible design systems and web apps. It includes examples and guidelines for all kinds of user interface elements that provide guidance and really make you think about accessible website design. (And everything is usable!)

Froala Charts

Froala Charts is made to help you create data visualizations for web or mobile apps. Build any chart you can imagine – bar, line, area, heat map, sankey, radar, time series, and more. Plus, you can customize anything and everything, so it all matches your brand. This premium tool is enterprise-level and comes with a one-time license fee.

CSSfox

CSSfox is a collection of designs that you can use for inspiration. The curated community project includes posts, reviews, and award nominees and winners.

Pattern Generator

Pattern Generator is a tool to create seamless and royalty-free patterns that you can use in projects. Almost every element of the pattern design is customizable, and you can “shuffle” to get new style inspiration. Design a pattern you like and export it for use as a JPG, PNG, SVG, or CSS.

Type Scale Clamp Generator

Type Style Clamp Generator helps you create a visualize a typographic scale for web projects. Pick a font and determine a few other settings and see the scale right on the screen. You can even put in your own words to see how they would look. Then, flip to see how sizes appear on different devices. Find a scale you like and snag the code with a click.

Flowdash

Flowdash is a premium app that helps you build custom tools, data sets and streamline your business operations with one tool. Manage data and processes without code. The tool combines a spreadsheet’s familiarity with a visual workflow builder, plus built-in integrations to automate repetitive tasks so your team can focus on what matters.

Scale

Scale is a website that provides new and open-source illustrations that you can use for projects. Maybe the illustration generator’s neatest part is that you can change the color with just a click to match your brand. Then download the image as an SVG or PNG.

Pe•ple

Pe•ple is a tool that adds a “customizable community” to any website to help grow your fanbase and provide a boost to SEO. It allows you to integrate chat, commenting, emojis, and passwordless login, among other things.

K!sbag: Free Minimal Portfolio Template

K!sbag is a free minimal website template that’s made for portfolio sites. (Did you resolve to update yours in 2021?) It includes 6 pages in a ready-made HTML format and PSD.

Merico Build

Merico Build is like a fitness tracker for code. It uses contribution analytics to empower developers with insight dashboards and badges focused on self-improvement and career growth. Sign up with tools you already use – Github or Gitlab.

Automatic Social Share Images

Automatic Social Share Images solves a common website problem: Missing or broken images when posts or pages are shared on social media. This tutorial walks you through the code needed to create the right meta tags so that popular social media channels pick up the image you want for posts. The best part is this code helps you create a dynamic preview image, so you don’t have to make something special every single time.

Animated SVG Links

Animated SVG Links can add a little something special to your design. This pen is from Adam Kuhn and includes three different link styles.

Blush

Blush helps you create illustrations. With collections made by artists across the globe, there’s something for everyone and every project. All art is customizable, so you can play with variations to create something unique.

Palms

Palms is a set of 43 sets of hands to help illustrate projects. Each illustration is in a vector format and ready to use.

Tabbied

Tabbied allows you to create and customize patterns or artwork in a minimal style for various projects or backgrounds. Tinker with your artwork and patterns and then download a free, high-resolution version.

How to Create Animated Cards

How to Create Animated Cards is a great little tutorial by Johnny Simpson that uses WebGL and Three.js to create a style like those on Apple Music. The result is a stylish modern card style that you can follow along with the CodePen demo.

Bandero

Bandero is a fun slab with a rough texture and interesting letterforms. The character set is a little limited and is best-suited for display use.

Magilla

Magilla is a stunning modern serif with great lines and strokes. The premium typeface family has six styles, including an outline option.

Roadhouse

Roadhouse is one of those slab fonts that almost screams branding design. The type designer must have had this in mind, too, with stripe, bevel, inline, half fill, outline, drop extrude, and script options included. (This family is quite robust, or you can snag just one style.)

Street Art

Street Art is for those times when a graffiti style is all that will do. What’s nice about this option – free for personal use – is that the characters are highly readable.

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The post Exciting New Tools for Designers, January 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

The holidays are fast approaching. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late to get a new website online or to make your existing one look festive for the holiday season.

When it comes to decking the halls of your website with a little festive cheer, how do you do this without spending loads of money and time on it?

You’re in luck. BeTheme has a variety of pre-built websites to help you do just that. Not only that, but you can use these festive websites for a variety of occasions, like:

  • Hanukkah
  • Kwanzaa
  • Christmas
  • Boxing Day
  • New Year’s

You could also just use one of these sites to make your website feel more seasonal as the temperatures get colder and the snow starts to fall. (If that’s what your winter wonderland looks like!)

Let’s have a look at 4 ways you can bring a little seasonal or holiday cheer to your visitors with a festive website from BeTheme:

Tip #1: Use a Page Builder That Makes it Easy to Swap in Festive Content

Unless you’re running a business like the Christmas Tree Shops, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have holiday imagery up all year long.

The only problem, though, is that it can be a real pain having to go in, find a new theme, and then redesign your site around it… For only a month or two.

That issue is easily resolved with BeTheme, which comes with over 600 pre-built websites and two page builders — Muffin and Elementor.

Because there are so many pre-built sites available, you can easily switch to a non-festive website once the holiday season is over.

In order to swap out this design with a festive website, you’d first have to reset your theme (which Be provides instructions on how to do). Then, install the new site you want to use.

Like BeXmas:

And if you only want, say, a new hero image in the top of your website, you can cherry-pick which parts of the pre-built site you install.

Tip #2: Effortlessly Switch From One Holiday to the Next

Let’s be honest, the winter holiday season can feel a little nuts — not just because your business has to keep up with the change of pace, but because your website has to keep in step with what’s going on.

So, let’s say you have an ecommerce site that changes frequently for upcoming sales, holidays, events, and so on. For this, you could use the BeMall pre-built site (all year long, mind you):

As you can see, it currently has a Black Friday message on the homepage. It’s not uncommon to have to transition from Black Friday or Cyber Monday into the December holidays.

Here’s how you might do that:

The update can be as minor or major as you want. So long as you use graphics and content that stay on-brand, you can easily swap out as much of your imagery as you like.

Tip #3: Use Small Animations to Bring the Holidays to Life

Holidays should be a time to lift spirits. Having a website that’s able to satisfy your customers’ needs during the holiday season will certainly help.

You might also want to think about adding small animations to your design, too.

The animations themselves don’t have to be festive, but you can use them to call attention to holiday-themed content. Take, for instance, BeParty:

You don’t need to have champagne bottles popping or streamers flying across the screen to get your point across.

This animation gives the New Year’s party balloons a gentle and natural feeling of bobbing up and down. An attention to a detail this small is sure to bring a smile to your visitors’ faces.

Tip #4: A Little Hint of Seasonal Flavor Can Go a Long Way

Holiday celebrations aren’t always big blowouts. Unless your entire business is going all-in on the holidays (or it’s a totally holiday-themed business), there’s no reason your site should have to go all out either.

Sometimes a more understated approach is best.

In that case, you’d keep your normal branded elements, imagery, and content in place on the website. But to make it feel a little more festive, you could infuse your site (at the very least, the homepage) with slight seasonal or festive touches.

For instance, let’s say you’ve built a website for a popular ski resort. Your website might look like the BeSnowpark site does normally:

The main draw of the resort is skiing, so it wouldn’t make much sense to change the graphics. However, you could do something like this:

It’s a small enough change, but the gift emoji and bigger lettering in the green button might inspire loyal snowbirds as well as first-time visitors to more quickly book their much-needed holiday getaway.

Get Your Festive Website for Christmas, New Year’s, and More

There are many science-backed reasons why a festive website is a good idea.

Holiday decorations, in general, stir up positive feelings of nostalgia for many people. They can also help alleviate some of the stress that’s built up over the course of the year:

What’s more, holiday decorations can visually signal to others that you’re friendly and accessible, even if they don’t know you.

Sounds exactly like how you want visitors and prospects to feel, right?

As you can see, there are many ways to decorate your website for the holidays. To do it quickly and affordably — and not completely turn your regular website upside-down — a BeTheme pre-built site is the way to go.

 

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of BeTheme –]

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

You’ve named your business. You’ve sorted out the visual branding piece. Now, it’s time to get your business online so you can start making money.

In this post, we’re going to look at where your web design business needs to set up shop online and how to get it up and running quickly.

Step 1: Set Up Your Website

As a web designer or developer, having a website is non-negotiable.

Not only does a website provide prospective clients with all the information they need about you, it can help you automate many of those annoying tasks that get in the way of your actual paid work.

So, let’s start here:

Buy Your Domain Name

If you haven’t done so already, use the business name generator exercise to come up with a domain name. You then have a couple of options for buying it.

To Do:

  • Buy it from a domain name provider like GoDaddy or Domain.com;
  • Or buy it from your web hosting company;
  • Check the next step to see which option makes the most sense for you.

Choose a CMS

Use the same CMS as the one you’ll use to build your clients’ sites. That way, clients don’t wonder why you’d use something like Squarespace for your site, but then recommend WordPress for theirs, for example.

To Do:

  • If you use a self-hosted CMS (like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla), hold on this until you purchase your web hosting;
  • If you use a hosted CMS (like Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify), you won’t need to do the next step. Instead, just sign up for your website builder and buy your domain name now.

Buy Your Web Hosting

If you’re wondering what the difference is between the various types of web hosting, read this post.

Basically, this is what you’re looking for:

  • A hosting company with a good reputation that provides expert and timely support;
  • An affordable starter plan — either shared or cloud hosting;
  • Server locations near you (at the very least, in the same country as you);
  • Top-notch security features at the server level as well as the physical hosting facility;
  • Caching and other speed optimizations built into the server and on-site equipment;
  • Compatibility with your CMS (look for one-click install, too).

Also, look for add-ons like SSL certificates, CDNs, and, of course, a free domain name.

To Do:

  • Sign up for the hosting plan you want along with your domain name and SSL certificate (this is a must for SEO);
  • Install your CMS from the control panel once you’re ready to go.

Build Your Website

Ultimately, you have two goals here:

  1. To build a website that convinces prospective clients that you’re the real deal;
  2. To build a website that prospects would want for themselves.

So, there’s no need to go crazy with outlandish features or futuristic animations and design. Keep it simple. Keep it neat. And give prospects an honest portrayal of who you are, and what you can do for them.

Design It

The first thing to do is take all that work you did to create your visual branding and use it to design your website.

If you’re building a WordPress website, consider starting with one of these multipurpose themes.

Build Out the Pages You Need

A theme will automatically create the pages you need (most of them, anyway). If you’re not sure which ones to start with, these are the ones your prospects are going to be looking for:

You may also want to add separate pages for Testimonials and Case Studies once you’ve accumulated enough of them to show off. For now, you can include samples of your work in the Portfolio page and testimonials on the Home page.

Fill in the Content

Even if writing isn’t your strong suit, that’s okay. So long as the content you write for your site is free of spelling and grammar errors, your prospective clients are going to focus on what you’re telling them, not on how proficient a writer you are.

That said, if you’re nervous about this piece of your website, here are some tips to help you out:

1. Be concise, it’s not just minimal design that goes over well with modern audiences. Minimal copy does, too.

2. Be transparent. Tell prospects what exactly they can expect when they work with you and why your web design services are going to be different from the competition.

3. Consumers don’t trust companies that use meaningless buzzwords and make empty claims. Instead, focus on writing about the real and very competitive skills you have. According to research from NIDO Student, these are the skills employers look for when hiring a designer:

4. Let your images tell some of the story for you. Just make sure you use (or create) images that will impress your audience.

5. After you’ve written your content, take a step back and tackle the structure and formatting from a designer’s POV.

6. Before you hit the “Publish” button, run your copy through Hemingway Editor to ensure your content is error-free.

Add the Right Features

When I talk about features, I’m referring to anything outside the main design and content on your website. These are usually sales and marketing tools like:

  • Chatbot/live chat
  • Contact forms
  • Pop-ups or notification banners
  • Discovery call scheduler
  • Cookies consent notice

Only add the features you absolutely need. In other words, the features that will automate the marketing and sales tasks you’d otherwise have to manage on your own.

Step 2: Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a very important part of the work you do to get your business online. Here’s why:

After you launch your business and website, the next thing you’re going to focus on is getting clients. This can take a lot of work as you pore over the following resources for referrals and leads:

  • Your existing contact list (i.e. family, friends, old employers, colleagues, etc.);
  • Freelance job boards;
  • Industry-specific job boards;
  • Social media posts, pages, and groups;
  • Google search results for “we’re hiring”;
  • And so on…

And when you’re not busy cold-emailing prospective clients or talking to them on the phone, you’re probably going to be working on your business’ processes. Running a business is very time-consuming.

So, what happens when you finally start working on website projects? It’s not like the client search ends there. It’s an ongoing thing. Which is why your website needs to be optimized for search.

Once your site gets indexed by Google and starts to generate authority, your pages will rank better and the increased visibility will start generating leads without you having to actively make the first move.

SEO is a huge topic, so I’m not going to cover it here. However, the links below will do a good job of guiding you towards your next steps.

To Do:

Step 3: Get Active on Social Media

Your website is going to play a lot of roles:

  • Digital business card;
  • Authority builder;
  • Marketing vehicle;
  • Sales platform;
  • Content marketer.

But there’s one very critical thing it can’t do and that’s directly converse with your audience and grow your network. This is why you need to spend time building out your social media once your website is good to go.

As for which social media platforms to use (as there are way too many), here are my thoughts:

Become an authority on Twitter.

Twitter is a good place to share daily thoughts and interesting content you’ve found on the web.

Get discovered on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is useful because it’s another place to get noticed by potential employers, so make sure your relevant work experience and portfolio are up-to-date.

Connect with other creatives on Facebook.

It’s really hard to get noticed on Facebook unless you pay to play. Instead, use it to find groups that you can turn to for support, referrals, and brainstorming.

Share your work on Dribbble.

While you could use Instagram or Pinterest to show off your work, you might get more traction on a design-specific platform like Dribbble. Serve as inspiration for others and potentially get discovered by prospects looking for designers there.

Down the line you might decide to expand your business into recurring revenue opportunities like online courses. In that case, a platform like YouTube would be great. For now, focus your efforts on the main ones above.

To Do:

  • Create your social media accounts;
  • Brand them to match your website — both the visual component as well as the bio;
  • Start sharing content on a regular basis. You can automate sharing with a social media management tool, but remember to log in at least a couple times a week so you can engage with others, too;
  • Be careful not to commit these social media faux pas.

Wrap-Up

I realize this is a ton of information to throw at you. However, if you want to get your new business online and for it to succeed, you need to maximize the opportunities that are available to you.

I hope this three-part guide to starting a new business has been helpful. If you have any questions on the tips provided along the way, let me know in the comments.

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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If you’re interested in a sneak peek of this year’s best Black Friday deals, stick around. You’ll find a few web designers’ favorites, including a stellar deal or two.

This year, more than a few of the popular retail outlets are shifting away from the traditional “camp out all night and bust open the doors when the store opens” shopping model. You might just prefer this less chaotic, ecommerce approach.

All of us are trying to adjust to what may eventually become a “new normal”. We may not like some aspects of this new normal, but there are bright spots as well.

More shoppers are likely going to shop online because of the coronavirus. That means you don’t have to fight the crowds while desperately attempting to socially distance. The shelves aren’t as apt to go bare, and shopping is easy, convenient, and safe.

1. Slider Revolution

You will find the Slider Revolution plugin incorporated in a host of WordPress theme tools and products. This premium plugin can in fact boast of more than 7 million users around the globe.

What you may not be aware of is that it is much more than just a WordPress slider. With it in your web design toolbox, you can in fact create just about anything you can imagine.

Expect to find:

  • A stunning selection of elements including sliders and carousels;
  • Attention-getting hero sections designed to make your home pages really stand out;
  • Single-page websites with layouts unlike anything you’ve seen before;
  • Modular structuring that allows you to rearrange and reuse sections however you choose and the ability to mix and match modules with any WordPress content;
  • Add-ons whose cutting edge features push the boundaries of web design possibilities.

There’s more of course. To celebrate Black Friday and Cyber Monday you can NOW get any Slider Revolution subscription plan or one-time payment at a 33% discount.

Just click on the banner and use the BLACKFRIDAY code at checkout.

2. Amelia

When done manually, booking and managing appointments can be tedious and subject to mistakes and errors. Amelia provides an automated booking process that is oh-so easy to work with and is error free; just what you need to help you acquire more happy customers.

Key features of Amelia’s fully responsive design include:

  • A dashboard system that enables you to track approved and pending appointments, booking changes, and revenue;
  • Zoom Integration, Google Calendar, and Outlook Calendar sync;
  • The ability to accept and easily manage recurring appointments that customers can schedule;
  • Front-end customer and employee appointment and event managing and backend appointment adding, editing, and rescheduling;
  • Email notifications for pending and approved appointments and events.

And much more that will save you loads of energy and a ton of time. Give Amelia a try, and if you like what you see (and you will), take advantage of the 30% Black Friday discount.

3. wpDataTables

wpDataTables 3.0, with its fresh, new look, gives you a host of different ways to generate attractive, customizable, and responsive tables and charts, and a host of different ways to present them.

  • Tables can be created from most data sources, the most common being MySQL query, PHP array, Google Spreadsheet, Excel files CSV files, and JSON and XML inputs;
  • A working knowledge of SQL is not required!
  • Addons include Gravity Forms, Formidable Forms, Report Builder, and Powerful Filter;
  • wpDataTables users can generate Tables and Charts quickly from massive amounts of data (saving hours of effort);
  • Tables and charts are customizable and maintainable (editable once placed in use);
  • Tables can be created manually if you wish.

Click on the banner now and take advantage of wpDataTables 30% Black Friday discount on all licenses and addons.

4. TheGem – Creative Multi-Purpose High-Performance WordPress Theme

In TheGem, the ultimate WordPress multipurpose toolbox, you will find:

  • A rich selection of 400+ premium pre-built multi-page and one-page websites, all available for Elementor and WPBakery page builders;
  • The ability to mix and match any of this demos, layouts and page sections to create your own unique look;
  • Extended WooCommerce layouts & tools for making online shops, which convert better;
  • TheGem Blocks: an ultimate tool for building webpages at the speed of light.

And much more. Just click on the banner and check this 5-star product out.

5. Mobirise Website Builder

Creating a Google-friendly can take time, unless you have Mobirise at your fingertips, in which case you have a number of helpful tools to speed things up.

  • No coding, it’s all drag and drop;
  • 3,600+ website templates are at your disposal plus sliders, popups, forms, and more;
  • Many eCommerce features, including a shopping cart;
  • Latest Google Amp and Bootstrap4;
  • You can download Mobirise for free.

And, because it’s Black Friday, everything is yours at a 94% discount!

6. Get Illustrations

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

With billions of internet users worldwide spending several hours online each day, the online presence of brands is now a necessary avenue for building, boosting, and maintaining positive value and attracting and interacting with customers. 

This has created increasing pressure for web design agencies when creating and managing websites. This pressure is multiplied by all the projects that web design agencies have to handle at one time. This is because different clients demand different things for their websites, whether it’s a signature feature or specialized functionality. 

Hence, it’s vital that the tools the agencies use to work are simple enough and suited to the tasks they have to accomplish in order to build and maintain these projects. Having the right tools can increase efficiency and effectiveness in managing websites.

Challenges in Modern Web Design

Building a website with all the essentials in mind is always easier said than done. Websites have to be both functional and easy on the eyes to invite traffic, disseminate information, or appeal a product or service to a target audience, and all while having an attractive and convenient interface.

The good news is that it’s perfectly possible to design a quality website and without spending a fortune to do so. Below are some of the challenges that web design agencies face when trying to deliver and reconcile efficient user experience and effective user interface in web design.

1. Appealing User Experience

Designing a good website means ensuring that the user experience is appealing to a general audience, but this is one of the most difficult parts of web design. Agencies must be careful not to turn off users with a confusing user experience. For instance, making important information difficult to find on web pages, using technical jargon that ordinary users wouldn’t understand, and focusing too much on the design rather than the overall experience are a few big mistakes that no designer should ever commit.

Instead, web design agencies should focus not only on making the design look good but also on making the experience smooth and fast for the regular site visitor. This includes improving design elements to make navigation easier as well as optimizing webpage load speeds.

2. Working With a Budget

It’s common for the client and the web design agency’s budgets to not line up at all times. Either the client will find the project quote too high, or the designer will find the client’s budget too low. The cost of a web design project can vary greatly, depending on what needs to be done. 

Although having to build a good website on a budget may be difficult, it’s important for both parties to come up with a set amount before the project even starts. The client should always specify what they want to achieve and how much they’re willing to pay to get it, and the agency should let the client know beforehand if this is possible.

3. Integrating Third-Party Functionality

Sometimes, clients may make requests for third-party functions that may not be easily integrated into the site. To prevent this, web design agencies should always consider integration when building a site. Most businesses and companies now have at least one social media account, so it doesn’t make sense for their site to remain disconnected.

When a website visitor shares an excerpt on a social media site like Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter, other people who can see their posts may become interested in visiting the original post on the website. Properly integrating third-party applications and functions into a website can get it more online presence and popularity.

4. Suitability to Different Devices

There are many devices that people can use to access the web. From smartphones to desktop computers, from cars to game consoles, and even wristwatches and digital cameras, all of these can be web-enabled as long as there’s an available internet connection. 

Websites nowadays should always be compatible with any of the devices people might use to go to the website. They should look pleasing and load fast regardless of what device a visitor is using.

5. Security of Personal Information

Most websites require personal or financial information, whether for account verification, for website subscription, or something else. Websites should be designed with personal security in mind, which is even more important since hacking has been on the rise since the coronavirus hit.

One of the biggest threats that websites face today is phishing, or when an attacker will pretend to be a trusted contact and attempt to compel you to click a malicious link. Another is ransomware, or where cybercriminals hold customer data for ransom and attempt to extort online business owners. Yet one more is SQL injections, or where hackers will attempt to execute malicious SQL commands in your website’s database. 

The best practices in regards to web design to mitigate these risks include third-party plugins and themes, keeping all of your software up to date, setting your web applications so they run the fewest privileges possible, and utilizing SSL certificates and HTTPS protocols. 

Adopting Site-Building Platforms

Gone are the days where you had to be technologically gifted to design a website from scratch, usually through manual HTML codes. Back then, you had to know your way around the web if you wanted to set-up and manage a site of your own.

Now, there are a lot of good website builders that allow you to create websites in a faster period of time. Even web design agencies now make use of such builders in order to make the job easier and more convenient. Not to mention, it allows agencies to focus on the design alone.

Although these platforms offer predesigned templates based on the most common purposes of websites, they normally allow the user to white label the website into the branding specific to the business or agenda of the website owner. The text styles, colors, and sizes coordinated to the website’s theme, and colors can be designed specifically to match the business or organization’s image and identity. 

Simply put, creating websites through a web builder platform can provide web design agencies with easy-to-understand tools that their teams and members can all uniformly use to more effectively and more efficiently handle all their projects.

With services that allow mobile optimization, site management, and even drag-and-drop editing, web design agencies can now better manage their projects and finish with their tasks more quickly.

Not only that, by using white labelling, services can conserve their time and energy into focusing on creating the best website for their client. With all the website builders currently available on the market today, just picking the right one can give web design agencies the best tools to use when creating, designing, and maintaining websites. 

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot