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How to Use Quizzes More Effectively in Interactive Content

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Content is the king of the digital world. This is an undisputed fact among marketers and business owners alike.

However, not all content is created equal. Interactive content is a more immersive form of marketing specifically intended for the digital age. Great for companies that need to develop deeper relationships with their audience. 

There are various kinds of interactive content for brands to explore these days. For example, you can create a poll where your customers vote for certain answers to questions. In addition, some companies hire developers to build immersive gaming experiences with prizes and rewards. 

Even standard content like blogs and articles can become more interactive with things like animations, buttons, and elements that ask visitors to do something. 

One of the most valuable forms of interactive content is the quiz. So, how can companies use quizzes to engage their audience effectively? Let’s find out…

The Benefits of Quizzes in Interactive Content

According to studies, 93% of marketers believe interactive content is extremely effective for educating and entertaining customers. Interactive content is meaningful because it’s engaging, and many marketers state that creating engaging content is one of their toughest challenges. 

In an environment where the average attention span is constantly dwindling, interactive content reduces the risk that your customer will end up being distracted by something else before they have a chance to convert on your website. 

Quizzes are an excellent form of interactive content, but many marketers don’t take full advantage of them yet. Quizzes, like some other forms of interactive content, can come in different styles. For example, you could have a personality quiz that tells your customer what kind of vegetable they would be. That might sound odd, but it helps to give your customer a sense of belonging, gives them a feeling of being understood, and offers entertainment. 

Some quizzes can answer questions for your customer. 

For instance, a quiz on “what to buy your dad for father’s day” is an excellent way to solve a customer’s problem while guiding them towards potential products that you sell. 

Z Gallerie, a retail company, launched a quiz called “What is your Z Gallerie Style personality?” The quiz offers a personalized recommendation experience on what to purchase for every current and potential customer. 

The personality quiz became a great way of bringing product recommendations to leads without being pushy. Z Gallerie could, therefore, consistently provide a unique experience to each customer based on their results. 

So, how do you make a quiz that’s really effective for your content marketing plan?

Step 1: Creating the Quiz

Quizzes are a kind of interactive content that can almost feel like a conversation with a brand. They’re an opportunity for you to show your audience how well you understand them. 

According to TryInteract, people take quizzes because they want to know themselves better or want to confirm what they think they already know about themselves. These content solutions solve problems, even if they’re handling a person’s curiosity about what kind of celebrity they’re most like. 

Before you start making your quiz, you need to know your goal and what you’re trying to do for your audience. If your goal is to get more people to feel more attuned to your company, you might need to create something that demonstrates how well you know your visitors.

The goal for the company is to demonstrate a deep knowledge of the industry and target market. If the quiz is helpful and informative, it adds to the brand’s credibility and makes it more likely that customers will want to continue purchasing.

Before you build your quiz, ask yourself:

  • What do you want to get out of your audience taking this quiz? (More conversions, better brand loyalty, improved engagement?)
  • Why would your audience want to take the quiz? (Is it relevant to their interests, will it give them some vital information?)

Knowing exactly what you and your audience should accomplish with the quiz will give you a good platform to begin building on. 

Step 2: Choose the Title and Quiz Type

Titles are important in any content marketing. 80% of readers decide whether to check out an article based on its title. The same process is common for people who want to decide whether they should take a quiz or not. 

There are a lot of great ways to pique your visitor’s attention with a quiz title. For instance, you could challenge your audience to prove their knowledge with the word “actually.” For instance, “How much do you actually know about Kale?” That kind of title immediately appeals to the competitive nature of the human being. 

Another great example of a challenging title is to tell your audience that they can’t do something. Buzzfeed did that with its millennial quiz. The great thing about this quiz title is that it speaks to the competitive nature of the reader but also gives that reader a chance to show that they belong to a specific community. 

Another option could be to ask a question and hope that curiosity will do the rest of the work for you. For instance, “Which celebrity chef are you most like?” The key to success here is understanding your audience and knowing exactly what they most want to know. 

Once you’ve figured out the title, choosing the kind of quiz you want to create is the next step. For instance, you can try:

  • Personality quizzes: People like hearing good things about themselves because of a psychological phenomenon called self-serving bias. A personality quiz that recognizes the features your customers like about themselves will make them feel happier and more connected to your brand.
  • The knowledge test: Commonly found on social media, these quizzes challenge a person’s knowledge on a specific subject. The benefit here is that your audience can learn something and share their knowledge with their friends for social points. This quiz from Unicef is an excellent example of the “knowledge” style quiz.

Step 3: Crafting Quiz Questions

Once you have a good idea of the kind of quiz you want to create and the title you’re going to put alongside it, you’ll need to begin bringing your interactive content to life. That means designing the right questions. 

Writing questions for a quiz is just like creating any excellent content. First, you need to keep your target audience in mind. Next, think about the kind of personality you’re trying to appeal to. Breathing some life into your quiz by injecting your unique sense of personality into it will be an excellent way to strengthen your bond with your customers. 

Other tips for making the most of your quiz questions include:

  • Use visuals in your questions: Having text-only questions is fine in some cases, but it’s worth looking into images too. Using pictures helps to keep things relevant and interesting and makes your quiz feel a lot more immersive. 
  • Don’t make questions too long: In-depth and complicated questions will only scare your audience away. Remember that they’re looking for something fun and lighthearted to do. This means that your questions should be as short as possible. 
  • Make it interesting: Don’t just ask basic questions like “what’s your favorite color” try to go beyond what your customers usually see on quizzes and make it relevant to the quiz topic. Again, this is your chance to show your audience how much you know.

Step 4: Creating Results That People Want to Share

If you want to design a quiz that really blows your audience away, then the results are one of the most important things to focus on. The results you offer your customers dictate whether they enjoy your quiz so much that they want to share it with other people. Creating share-worthy results is how you boost your chances of finding new customers and even going viral. 

So, how do you design results that people want to share? Start by helping your customers to feel positive about themselves. The results should make them feel like a better person or confirm the good things they already believe about themselves. Research tells us that positive emotions are more likely to promote sharing. 

For instance, this quiz from the PBS company makes people feel good by demonstrating that they know their books. This confirms a customer’s idea that they are well-read.

Using share-worthy images is another way to improve your chances of designing results that people want to share. You’ll need to use interesting pictures here that speak to your audience. Bright and entertaining pictures will make results more eye-catching on a social media feed. 

Don’t forget to include a call-to-action on your results page too. It’s always helpful to give your audience a nudge in the direction you want them to move in. Providing a call-to-action that asks your customers to share their results increases your chances of positive sharing behavior. 

Step 5: Know How to Distribute Your Quiz

Once you’ve put all of the essential components of your quiz together, the next step is ensuring you can distribute that quiz and share it with as many people as possible. For instance, you can promote your quiz on social media to reach more possible customers. Twitter and Facebook are always great places to get started but don’t be afraid to experiment elsewhere. 

Sharing snippets of the quiz experience in an Instagram Story could be a great way to generate engagement or posting a picture on your Instagram feed. 

When promoting your interactive content on social media, use an attractive image to highlight the experience and ensure you make that captivating headline stand out. Share both the caption and image with a shortened link to measure results. Shorter links are more likely to attract audience attention and encourage sharing later. If your links are too long, they can end up looking spammy or unprofessional. That’s not the image you want to build with your quiz content. 

If you need an extra boost for your quiz, promoting through Facebook advertising could be the ideal solution. Paid ads are a great way to get extra attention, but you need to choose your target audience carefully. Select your audience according to demographics, behaviors, connections, and locations. 

Remember that Facebook gives you plenty of opportunities to track down the kind of customers you want to speak to. Creating a custom audience could be a handy step too. This is always useful if you have a lot of information from an email list or a collection of contacts you’ve generated over time.

Step 6: Following Up on Your Quiz

Once you’ve successfully attracted people to your quiz experience, the next step is to follow up on the leads you’ve hopefully collected. When designing a quiz, it’s always a good idea to ask your customer for their email addresses before you give their results. This ensures that you can collect plenty of leads in the long term for nurturing purposes. 

Marketing company, The Foundation, designed a quiz that asked customers whether they had an entrepreneurial mindset. The quiz was based on an existing eBook offered by the company. The quiz, combined with a Facebook ad campaign, helped the business collect new leads to advertise their ebook. The Foundation managed to reduce its cost per lead from $6 to $3.80 using this method. 

When following up on your quiz experience, make sure that you get the tone right. The first thing you need to do is thank your audience for taking the quiz in the first place. After someone opts in and offers their email address, send a quick email that shares their results and says “thanks.” 

After a couple of days, you can follow up on your thank you email by asking your audience to retake the quiz or take a new one. Encourage these repeat customers to share their testimonials and gradually introduce more interesting content you have that’s connected to your quiz. For instance, if you create a quiz to determine whether someone has an entrepreneurial mind, you could advertise articles that cover similar topics. 

Finally, after regular engagement from your audience, you can begin to implement strategies that might convince your audience to purchase your products. This could mean showing off your entrepreneurial eBook, asking someone to sign up for a webinar, or something else entirely.

Don’t forget to track the performance of every quiz too. Examining metrics like click-through rates for your quiz advertisements and conversion rates will help you see which quizzes generate the most attention and action from your intended audience. 

Time to Add Quizzes to Your Interactive Content Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is one of the best ways to engage with your audience and strengthen your position in any industry. The right content demonstrates your knowledge, develops trust, and helps you to attract new customers. With interactive content, you can take the relationship you build with your audience to the next level. It’s your chance to engage with your customers and create an emotional relationship. 

Quizzes are one of the most effective forms of interactive content, and they’re also one of the easiest to implement into your existing strategy. It doesn’t take a lot of time or money to create a good quiz, and you can usually find tools online to help you with things like structure and formatting. You could even hire a professional to design a quiz for you. 

Once you’ve got the kind of quiz that’s really going to interest your target audience, the next step is distributing it in a way that generates as much attention as possible. Remember, you can advertise on social media and various other channels. However, it’s also helpful to pay attention to your options for helping do your promotion for you. For example, many customers will be more than happy to share quiz results that confirm the identity they’re trying to build online.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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Exciting New Tools for Designers, September 2021

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Since school is back in session, this month’s roundup has a learning focus. In addition to tools, many of the resources include guides, tutorials, and cheat sheets to help make design work easier.

Here’s what’s new for designers this month.

ScrollingMockup.io

ScrollingMockup.io generates high-definition, animated scrolling mockups in minutes. All you have to do is paste your website URL, select from the expanding template gallery, add some music and post. You can create three mockups for free, and then this tool comes with a subscription model. The paid model allows for custom branding for mockups and more.

FilterSS

FilterSS is a curated collection of CSS image filters for use in projects. Upload an image, sort through the list, and then copy the code for the filter you want to use. It’s that easy!

Buttons Generator

Buttons Generator is a fun tool with so many button options in one place. Choose from three-dimensional, gradient, shadow borders, neumorphic, retro, animated, ghost, with arrows, and more all in one place. Click the one you like, and the code is copied right to your clipboard and ready to use in projects.

UI Cheat Sheet: Spacing Friendships

UI Cheat Sheet: Spacing Friendships is a fun – and memorable approach to figuring out spacing. This guide shows how close or far away elements should be based on “friend” circles with a couple of relatable instances. It’s one of the most relatable examples of this concept out there while emphasizing the importance of spacing in design.

PrettyMaps

PrettyMaps is a minimal Python library that allows you to draw customized maps from OpenStreetMap data. This tool can help you take online map design to the next level with cool, unique map visuals. It’s based on osmnx, matplotlib, shapely, and vsketch libraries.

Card.UX/UI

Card.UX/UI is a card-style generator with more than 20 templates and elements to create custom cards. Use the on-screen tools to design it the way you want and then copy the code for easy use.

Couleur.io

Couleur.io is a simple color palette builder tool that lets you pick a starting color and build a scheme around it. One of the best elements of the tool might be the quick preview, which shows your choices using the palette in context and in dark mode. Get it looking the way you want, and then snag the CSS to use in your projects.

CSS Accent-Color

CSS Accent-Color can help you tint elements with one line of CSS. It’s a time-saving trick that allows for greater customization for your brand in website design projects. Plus, it works equally well in dark or light color schemes. It supports checkboxes, radio, range, and progress bars.

Vytal

Vytal shows what traces your browser leaves behind while surfing the web. This scan lets you understand how easy it is to identify and track your browser even while using private mode. In addition, it scans for digital fingerprints, connections, and system info.

Imba

Imba is a programming language for the web that’s made to be fast. It’s packed with time-saving syntax tags and a memorized DOM. Everything compiles to JavaScript, works with Node and npm, and has amazing performance. While the language is still in active development, the community around it is pretty active and growing.

SVG Shape Dividers Creator

SVG Shape Dividers Creator is a tool that allows you to create interesting shapes with SVG so that your colors and backgrounds aren’t always rectangles. You can adjust and side, change the color, axis, and flip or animate it. Then snag the CSS, and you are ready to go.

Image Cropper

Image Cropper is a tool that allows you to crop and rotate images using the flutter plugin. It works for Android and IOS.

Noteli

Noteli is a CLI-based notes application that uses TypeScript, MongoDB, and Auth0. The tool is just out of beta.

Yofte

Yofte is a set of components for Tailwind CSS that help you create great e-commerce stores. The UI Kit is packed with components with clean and colorful designs that are customizable. The code is easy to export and clean. This premium kit comes with a lifetime license or a monthly plan.

UI Deck

UI Deck is a collection of free and premium landing page templates, themes, and UI kits for various projects. This is a premium resource with paid access to all of the tools. It includes access to more than 80 templates.

Star Rating: An SVG Solution

Star Rating: An SVG Solution is a tutorial that solves a common design dilemma: How to create great star rating icons for pages. This code takes you through creating an imageless element that’s resizable, accessible, includes partial stars, and is easy to maintain with CSS. It’s a great solution to a common design need.

Designing Accessible WCAG-Compliant Focus Indicators

Designing Accessible WCAG-Compliant Focus Indicators is another convenient guide/tutorial for an everyday application. Here’s why it is important: “By designing and implementing accessible focus indicators, we can make our products accessible to keyboard users, as well as users of assistive technology that works through a keyboard or emulates keyboard functionality, such as voice control, switch controls, mouth sticks, and head wands, to mention a few.”

Blockchain Grants

Blockchain Grants is a tool for anyone developing blockchain applications and in need of funding. It’s a database of grants from a variety of organizations for different applications. Start looking through this free resource to help secure additional funding for your projects.

Basement Grotesque

Basement Grotesque is a beautiful slab with a great heavy weight and plenty of character. There are 413 characters in the set with plenty of accents, numbers, and variable capitals.

Gadimon

Gadimon is a fun, almost comic book-style layered script. The font package includes a regular and extrude style.

Lagom

Lagom is a sleek and functional serif typeface with 16 styles in the robust family from ultralight to extra bold italic. It’s readable and has a lot of personality.

Striped Campus

Striped Campus fits our back-to-school theme with a fun, scholastic look and feel. The block letters have a thick outline stroke and some fun inline texture.

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3 Essential Design Trends, September 2021

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Do you ever get bored with design projects? Feel like you keep designing the same things on repeat?

This collection of trends – from fun angles to illustrations where you wouldn’t expect them to cool three-dimensional concepts – is sure to help you think a little more out of the box. It might be just the right inspiration to cure some of that design boredom.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

1. Angles for Attention

Working with angles is a fun technique because you can essentially point website visitors to what you want them to see on the screen.

Angles can be aggressive and have an obvious visual goal. They can also have an easier feel without so much direct intent. This trend can look a lot of different ways, making it a versatile option for designers.

Each of the three examples here takes a different approach to angles.

Bake Inc. uses various angles with imagery and whitespace to draw the eye past the visual elements to the brand name at the bottom of the screen. If you click through to the design, you’ll see that there isn’t just one angle-image design, but it’s a collection of changing images and angles that work beautifully in concert.

Instabase uses a collection of animated geometric shapes as the main visual element on the screen. Note the directional pull of the triangle in the bottom left of the group of shapes. It helps lead the user to the “Request a Demo” call to action on the other side of the screen.

Readymag’s Custom Cursor is one of those aggressive angles. The giant cursor is what the design is about, but because of the size and shape of the object, users are directed to the word “cursor” as well. That adds extra emphasis to what the design is about. With the combination and the oversized element and giant angle that are so in your face, you can’t help but get a quick understanding of what the design is about.

 

 

2. Unexpected Illustrations

This might be the most fun we’ve seen with a website design trend in a while – projects and companies are using illustrations in some of the most unexpected places.

The design surprise happens when an industry that you don’t expect uses this type of imagery. A simple illustration takes the design to another level, or illustrations mix with other elements to paint a whimsical overall scene. Those are the things you can find with each of these three examples.

Krivitzky is a website for a business law firm. This is not at all the type of website where you’d expect illustrations (including a dragon). While the design is fun to interact with, it’s hard to say if it works. If you needed representation, would this appeal to you? In terms of legal websites, this is a total disruptor and forces your attention. That could be a good thing.

Studio Mesmer is one of those simply understated designs that’s almost perfect. The stark black background makes the simple illustration that much more striking. The eye also has a nice hover animation effect for an added surprise.

Kenn & Kitt mixes an illustration with real imagery to paint a more whimsical scene. What’s nice about the illustrated elements of the website design is that it helps connect the website to the product packaging, which uses illustrations while feeling “real” with the photo of a dog. It’s a bright and sunny combination of photos and illustrations that feels whimsical but has the right vibe for the product category.

 

 

3. 3D Depth

The three-dimensional website design trend keeps ebbing and flowing. And right now, it is flowing with full-screen 3D elements for maximum depth that makes you feel like you can almost dive into the screen.

While most of these designs use illustration with animation to create the 3D scene, you don’t have to abide by this example. The goal is to create something that looks and feels immersive so that users will want to take part in the experience.

The Match Maker has an 80s gamer vibe where you can feel yourself going down the tunnel on the screen. Additional hover animations move the screen, even more to help you get into the game.


Hafele Discoveries uses a wide-angle style animation with back and forth motion. The fish-eye style of the design adds an element of depth, which is further magnified by the foreground box with text and call to action elements. The design concept is attention-getting, but the motion can be a little dizzying if you leave it on the screen too long.

FiveT Hydrogen takes a more “traditional” approach to a three-dimensional website design with an illustration/animation that includes elements of depth. This is magnified on the scroll action of the design with shadows and layers and a variety of elements – real and illustrated – that make you feel like part of what’s happening on the screen. It’s an immersive learning experience about clean hydrogen that almost forces users to keep scrolling. The 3D effect is what takes it to another level.

 

 

Conclusion

Not every design trend is right for every project. Take a good look at what you are trying to accomplish and match it with a design concept.

If you want to try one of these trends, but they are a little too out there, experiment with a small area of the design or a landing page first. That’s a good place to test ideas and conversion rates to see if the design technique will work for your audience.

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Build Your Site The Easy Way With TagDiv Newspaper

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Ready to take your business online but not sure where to start? It’s a surprisingly simple process, made all the easier by the tagDiv Newspaper theme that can shoulder the burden of code, leaving you to be creative.

Professional web designers normally begin with broad brushstrokes, roughly hewing a site, before finessing on the finer details; that’s exactly what tagDiv’s Newspaper theme lets you do, with innovative tools and a huge selection of pre-built options to choose from.

What is the Newspaper Theme?

Newspaper is the best-selling magazine theme from tagDiv. In constant development over the last twelve years, it’s been used to create world-beating sites for clients as diverse and demanding as United Nations, ShareAmerica, The Rackspace Blog, Bitcoin News, Uber Engineering, and Tech Explorist.

As the name implies, the Newspaper theme is primarily a magazine or blog theme, but you can use it for any kind of site, in any type of industry.

Packed with intuitive features that make personal web development not just possible but enjoyable, it will have your site ready to launch in no time.

It is fully compatible with Gutenberg, WordPress’ drag-n-drop site builder; it also comes with its own WYSIWYG, tagDiv Composer. All the sites built in Newspaper are fully flexible, responsive, mobile-friendly, and retina-ready. Newspaper is even fully integrated with WooCommerce so that you can transform your magazine site into a fully-featured ecommerce store.

Newspaper has been carefully coded to make the most of the upcoming Core Web Vitals update from Google, so your new site will be well-placed to rank highly on search engines.

Now that you know a little about the background of the Newspaper theme let’s look at how we can use it to build a WordPress site.

Pre-Built Websites

Sometimes it’s not just your coding skills but your design skills that are lacking; you know what kind of site that you want, you’re just hazy on the details.

This is where tagDiv’s Newspaper theme comes into its own. With a single click, you can install an entire pre-built website. And the process is so fast and convenient that you can try out as many as you like and pick the one that matches your vision.

You can even import a whole ton of pre-written content for testing the sites out, so you can see how it will look with your content without spending hours typing or copying and pasting text out of a Word doc.

There are 120 different designs covering all kinds of different industries. This means no matter what kind of site you’re building, one click, and you’re ready to go live.

Cloud Library

One step up from a full pre-built website is tagDiv’s Cloud Library. If you’ve installed one of the pre-built websites, this is probably where you want to go next.

The Cloud Library is a collection of 1600 different design elements that can be mixed and matched with live-editing to fast-track your site creation. You’ll find content blocks like headers, footers, testimonials, banners, and featured items. You can mix-n-match them however you please to create the site of your dreams.

Putting the “Cloud” into the Cloud Library are tagDiv’s servers, storing the code for each of these elements, so your installation only needs to load the code you actually use. This provides a huge boost in performance.

Composer

Lastly, the Newspaper theme provides tagDiv Composer, a specialist WordPress builder — like Gutenberg — that allows you to customize your website with absolutely no coding skills whatsoever. It’s a powerful yet simple-to-use tool that allows you to edit the elements of the Cloud Library and adapt them to your own purposes.

With Composer, you can create your own headers, footers, banners, text blocks, and more without any of the limitations of cookie-cutter design.

tagDiv Composer gives you the ultimate control over your site. You’ll find all the essential elements you need, from text and buttons to images and videos. All you have to do is drag and drop them into place.

Building a Site With tagDiv Newspaper Theme

As you can see that the fastest way to an engaging and original website is, to begin with, a pre-built site, then add the different blocks of code you want from the Cloud Library, and finally customize them with the Composer.

To make this possible, tagDiv has brought together experts from multiple disciplines, including brand strategy, project management, and web development.

It’s a slick system for quickly publishing high-quality sites that are unique to you and your business. Trusted by more than 130,000 customers worldwide, the Newspaper has earned tagDiv the status of Power Elite Author on ThemeForest and Top Author on Envato.

The Newspaper theme costs just $59, which includes six months of support from tagDiv, but for just $17.63, you can extend support to 12 months for added peace of mind.

tagDiv Newspaper is the simplest way for you to take your business online using WordPress.

 

[— This is a sponsored post on behalf of tagDiv —]

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Exciting New Tools For Designers, August 2021

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It’s almost time for another season of change. Although the temperatures might not reflect it, this is the time of year where most of us start thinking about what’s next.

This collection of tools and resources for designers is just the spark to propel you forward with work as you think ahead. Here’s what’s new for designers this month.

Gradient.Art

Gradient.Art is a CSS-based gradient generator that’s packed with functionality and customization options. It’s more than just a color selector and is an actual gradient editor that allows you to work with a variety of controls to get just the color variations you want for projects. Create illustrations, patterns, icons, and more with this layer-based tool that’s still in beta.

Wicked Backgrounds

Wicked Backgrounds takes some of the headaches out of creating just the right background for website design projects. It’s another easy and customizable generator designed to help create backgrounds with great color, depth, and balance for various project types. The makers promise more features in the future as well.

Typedream

Typedream is not what you might expect from the name; it’s actually a website-building tool. It’s designed to help put the focus on the words of a design with a simple interface that most people can figure out. You can connect your own domain and then optimize for search with built-in SEO tags. It’s a zippy tool for simple sites.

Orbital

Orbital is a zero-friction, super-interactive, customizable place to gather online. Pop in for meetings, quick chats, open-door office hours, or cowork together through the day – all using the same link. This premium tool has super fun backgrounds and meeting spaces.

Access Guide

Access Guide is your one-stop guide to accessibility information for the web. It’s packed with articles and information to help you understand parts and all of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines, the official standard for accessibility online. (Plus, content is sorted into neat cards that make things easy to search and find.)

InLine

InLine is a free JavaScript library built to create a simple text editor for web applications and mobile apps. The tool claims to be the smallest WYSIWYG editor designed to fit into any layout. The plugin allows you to edit and customize text elements practically anywhere.

3D Bay

3D Bay is a collection of free three-dimensional stock images that you can use for various projects. Collections are searchable. Most of the images are actually 3D scene illustrations, a popular design element with many SaaS website designs.

MeisterNote

MeisterNote is a writing tool for teams. (It’s perfect for the new remote working world.) The interface is sleek and intuitive, and you can create customer workspaces for notes and teams to collaborate. One of the best functions might be the search feature, allowing you to find information in notes easily.

Shapecatcher

Shapecatcher solves an interesting problem. Have you ever visualized an element but don’t know what it is called or how to find it? This tool has a “drawbox” where you can sketch the element, and then it visually searches a database of 11,000-plus Unicode characters in multiple languages to find a close match that you can use online.

Batch Image Processing

Batch Image Processing allows you to edit, crop, and style or add watermarks groups of images all at once. It’s a web-based tool that does everything in a flash and allows you to redownloaded processed images for quick use. (It’s great if you need multiple photos with the same crop or size!)

Integrately

Integrately is an integration automation tool designed to help your apps, tools, and web elements talk back and forth. Connect apps to make tasks run on their own in ways that native software might not do alone. (Pro tip: Use it to connect with your email to send notifications or reports automatically.)

Vechai UI

Vechai UI is a set of high-quality, accessible React UI components with built-in dark mode using Tailwind CSS. Components include pre-designed headless UI and Radix UI.

Style Free HTML Bootstrap 4 Template

Style Free HTML Bootstrap 4 Template is a simple and minimally styled website template for a variety of project types. It’s a great website starter if you need to get a site up and running quickly.

Glass UI CSS Generator

Glass UI CSS Generator helps you create trending neumorphism/soft UI/glass UI style elements. The tool is a CSS generator that allows you to add some of your own elements and then pick styling options while outputting CSS and HTML.

Lineicons

Lineicons is a collection of more than 5,000 line icons that you can use for various projects. Every icon comes with free CDN, regular and light variations, an editor, and more to make it browsable and easy to use. The set has high legibility, and the free set of icons includes more than 500 options.

Carrd

Carrd is a simple, free, and responsive one-page website builder that you can do pretty much anything with. It’s perfect for personal profiles, landing pages, or one-page websites. All it takes is a little imagination.

AdonisJS

AdonisJS includes everything you need to create a fully functional web app or an API server. So stop wasting hours in downloading and assembling hundreds of packages and do it all with this framework for Node.js.

Eastman Condensed

Eastman Condensed is a beautiful and functional sans serif that’s easy to read. The demo version is free for personal use, but a commercial license for the full family is available.

Peachy Rose Font

Peachy Rose Font is a fun novelty option that is fun and light. Plus, it is free for any use, even commercial. The set is fairly large for a free option, with 233 characters.

Selga

Selga is an expressive and complex display font with a retro feel. The swashes and tails are especially nice on this typeface, which is free for personal use.

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Review: Should Designers Use Design Bundles?

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One of the most challenging stages of a design project is laboriously producing all those assets that bring it to life.

Whether you’re a web designer in need of icons, or a brand designer looking for mockups, it’s a smart move to fall back on stock assets to speed up your turnaround, reduce costs, and enliven your designs.

With so many stock sites to choose from, which should you opt for? Today we’re going to take a look at DesignBundles.net and ask if it’s the right choice for your project.

What is Design Bundles?

Design Bundles is exactly what it sounds like: sets of design assets that you can download for free or at huge reductions on RRP.

Launched five years ago, Design Bundles is brought to you by the same team that delivers Font Bundles.

Over two million customers are already enjoying the benefits of Design Bundles’ weekly updates.

What Can You Download From Design Bundles?

There are currently over 800,000 products listed on Design Bundles, and the collection is growing all the time.

The files have been produced by 6,500 of the world’s leading independent designs. Because the products are top-quality, you can really make them work: scale them, flip them, distort them, recolor them; just about anything is possible when you’re using high-quality raw ingredients.

What’s really impressive is the range of products that are in the collection. You’ll find backgrounds, logos, icons, textures, patterns, and clip art. For product designers, there are mockups and web elements. Print designers will love the huge range of cards, invites, flyers, posters, and brochures. And if you’re looking for standard stock images, you’ll find a gargantuan range under popular themes such as technology, architecture, travel, and business.

Because Design Bundles is relatively new, you won’t find its collection padded out with out-of-date Gifs. In fact, Design Bundles is one of our favorite places for free SVGs, the best format for graphics on the web.

All the products are royalty-free and licensed for personal and commercial use, so you can relax knowing that you’re fully covered.

What Makes Design Bundles Different?

There are a lot of design bundles services online, so what makes Design Bundles different? Well, firstly, the quality; Design Bundles has a consistently high level of designs. We love the freebies. They make a huge difference and are great for trying out ideas you might not be ready to invest in.

Design Bundles differs from other stock sites because it offers curated bundles of complementary assets — you don’t just download a vector file; you download a set of vector files. This innovative approach means you don’t have to go hunting for matching images; once you’ve found the right download for your project, you have a whole range to enjoy.

The whole process of using Design Bundles is simple, from browsing through the available assets to choosing a design and through to the fast, simple checkout process. It’s all designed to make including design assets into your projects as simple as possible.

The website is user-friendly, and in the unlikely event that you’ll need them, the support team is friendly, helpful, and prompt to handle queries.

Is Design Bundles Good Value?

We’d be lying if we said that cost wasn’t a big bonus of using Design Bundles. Design Bundles offer up to 96% discounts on regular prices, meaning that you can get the same incredible assets that top design agencies use at a fraction of the price.

In terms of time-saved, inspiration-delivered, and graphics-acquired, your Design Bundles subscription will more than pay for itself.

Alongside the daily and weekly deals, you’ll find products you can try for free. For example, design Bundles provide a whole heap of free SVGs. And not just sample files. There are thousands of files to download and use in projects. You can’t get better value than free!

There are new freebies every week, so it’s worth subscribing just to ensure you don’t miss anything.

For freelancers, the licensing model is particularly attractive. Because there’s no limit on the places you can download design resources once you’ve bought them, you can download files at home, in the office, or at a client’s workspace — whatever is convenient. Meaning you carry a huge library of resources with you wherever you go.

Oh, and if you want to make the most of your new Design Bundles assets, don’t forget to check out its YouTube channel, where you can learn tons about how to create effects, edit images, and complete creative projects.

Should Designers Use Design Bundles?

When you’re designing a project, whether you’re a digital artist, a web developer, or a crafter, the result relies on the quality of its component parts.

Design Bundles offers you the chance to work with high-quality assets from some of the web’s top designers at a fraction of the price of creating them yourself.

We’re confident that if you give Design Bundles a go, you’ll quickly see the benefits for yourself. But if you’re still not sure, why not sign up for its newsletter and check out some of the daily and weekly deals and the freebies that are available to you.

Design Bundles is a recipe for success that you’ll be happy you discovered.

 

[— This is a sponsored post on behalf of Design Bundles —]

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3 Essential Design Trends, August 2021

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Sometimes the designs that make the most impact do a lot of unexpected things and break some of the most tried and true rules of visual theory.

Sometimes these design elements work brilliantly, and other times they are fleeting or fall flat. This month all of the examples here seem to break some conventional design rules. Here’s what’s trending in design this month…

1. Alternative Homepage Image/Video Crops

This trend breaks some traditional standards and is pretty refreshing – alternative homepage crops for images and video.

The full screen or 16:9 aspect ratio is out the window with vertical and square options that prove you can do more with your photo collection.

What’s great about this trend is that it’s super attention-getting because of the interesting use of space and imagery. Almost any design without the full-width hero header will grab your attention because it is different. These examples prove that point, and each design does it differently.

Now here’s the challenge: You have to make sure that this style has a solid fallback for mobile so that the result is equally impressive.

Janmaat Fotografie does a great job accounting for interesting photo shapes and flips the script on mobile. (Rather than what you might expect with text then photos because of the desktop placement, the photo stack uses the same shape and layering and is above the text on mobile.) The result is phenomenal.

N3 uses a very vertical image in an almost split-screen style design. It’s a sharp contrast to many of the other split screens we are accustomed to with an equal divide. The distinct shape of the image is interesting and intriguing. It’s definitely not a shape we see in website design frequently.

Bounce uses a similar split-screen effect in the opposite manner as the example above, with the tall, vertical space as an “empty” area and the right side filled with a square video. The shapes help push and pull your eyes across the screen to look at all of the elements and take in the overall design. It’s one of those ideas that if you only talked about it, you might talk yourself out of it, but here, it’s pretty striking.

 

 

2. On-Screen “Stickers”

Stickers are a design trend that has made its way from social media to website design.

These website stickers break design rules because they cover content or seem to be put on the canvas haphazardly. And that’s why they are so attention-getting!

The benefit to these stickers is that they can highlight specific items or content or help focus a call to action.

Friesday uses stickers in conjunction with hover effects to keep users interacting with the design. Multiple stickers can even pop onto the screen in the same location. The animation is simple and fun and feels like a digital sticker book.

August Eighth uses a center sticker as a call to action. It’s a true focal point in the center of the screen with an almost three-dimensional effect that lifts it off the background video. It’s a borderline dark pattern since the only way to get the box off the screen is to click through to the shopping part of the website.

EasyGreen has a bright yellow sticker in the bottom corner that feels almost like the sticker on a piece of fruit. This style and placement work well for the content and product featured. It’s bringing the digital and real-world a little closer with this design element.

 

 

3. Breaking Design “Rules”

The third trend this month is kind of a catch-all for general rule-breaking. While the other trends show certain design elements that aren’t the norm, each of these examples really tosses everything you traditionally think about design out the window. (And that’s ok.)

The trick to a rule-breaking design is that it has to be focused and simple enough to keep users interested and provide intuitive elements that tell them how to interact with the design. It’s a delicate balance.

Here’s how these sites do just that.

Supercontinent has a lot going on. At least four typefaces on the screen at a time, movement (using different shapes and aspect ratios), overlapping elements, hidden navigation, and you may even find a few more broken rules if you look closely. And somehow, it still works.

What’s pulling this design together is a key unbroken rule – the chaos is rooted in a grid system that keeps it all somewhat organized. Plus, there’s plenty of white space to keep elements from feeling crowded and overwhelming.

Source of Plastic Waste combines elements in unexpected ways. There’s no real navigation; the site is just a continuous scroll. That’s a big website usability rule broken right out of the gate. There are other design elements as well, from the “header”/logo moving to the top right corner to the almost over-designed transparent box for text elements. There are a lot of scroll elements and actions happening and layers of text on text in some of the screens.

But here’s the thing about this design. As many rules as it breaks, the story is interesting enough to keep you scrolling. The question is, how long and how far do you go without getting lost or confused.

The Debris of Attention is designed to show “bad design” with elements that are frustrating and annoying on websites. The gamified design allows you to hover on each element to remove it and clean up the design.

While this site breaks the rules on purpose, it is still an experiment in how long a user will hang on with so many visual effects happening at once.

 

 

Conclusion

While most of the time, people think about “breaking the rules” as a bad thing, that’s not always true in the design space. Sometimes breaking the rules can result in an unexpected delight.

The challenge is to make sure that when you break the rules, the design is still usable, functional, and understandable. If so, you’ve found a winning combination.

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16 Free Websites for Learning to Code in 2021

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The best free online coding websites for beginners are hubs of education and insight, designed to take your knowledge and career to the next level.

For years, technical careers have been gaining more attention among innovative individuals. In a digital world, people capable of speaking computer language often have the widest selection of job opportunities. However, before you can start leveraging the blossoming job market, you need to hone your skills. That’s where free coding websites come in.

A free online coding website is an environment where you can develop your understanding of various kinds of code, update your programming prowess, and even earn certifications. Today, we’re going to be looking at some of the most impressive coding websites on the market.

Coding Careers: Opportunities in 2021 and Beyond

Before we leap into our overview of the best free coding websites, let’s examine why it’s so important to invest in your coding role. Looking at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, we see that coders earn an average of $89,190 per year.

Elsewhere, CompTIA notes that technology hiring has accelerated since the end of 2020, with up to 391,000 new positions opening in the US during December.

Though coding careers have been popular for some time now, they have particularly high value following the pandemic, as companies worldwide adapt to the changes associated with remote workforces, digital customer service, and ecommerce. The pandemic has made us more reliant on technology than ever before, as a result:

  • Coding skills are in high demand: Coding skills are essential for the newly digital world. Studies find that the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation by around 7 years. Companies need coding professionals to stay ahead of the curve.
  • Coding knowledge is becoming more versatile: Companies are looking for coding skills in more than just programmers. They want their data analysts, IT workers, artists, designers, and other professionals to have these talents too.
  • People with coding talent can earn more: Jobs requiring coding skills tend to pay more than those that don’t. This reveals the growing need for coding knowledge in the digital ecosystem.

Coding skills provide an avenue to tech professionals for higher-income jobs, and these careers are growing faster on average than other job opportunities.

The Best Websites for Learning to Code

Learning to code or developing your existing coding skills can help you to unlock a host of new opportunities. Today, you can learn coding online for free, just by visiting the right websites.

Even a basic knowledge of coding can drive a range of results, such as helping to support the better management of websites, reducing reliance on outside developers, and opening the door to app development. So whether you want to start a new career or upgrade your existing knowledge, these sites will help:

BitDegree

BitDegree is a wonderful website for anyone interested in web development, coding, data science, and programming. There are various courses to choose from, depending on the career path you want to take. For instance, you can learn about the AWS cloud or start your journey into gaming development. For coding, BitDegree covers languages like:

  • CSS
  • HTML
  • PHP
  • SQL
  • JavaScript
  • jQuery

The best thing about BitDegree is how it makes learning so fun. There are gamified courses and sections where you can really dive into the essentials of coding. In addition, the online coding course collection often features hundreds of discounted options for people on a budget.

CodeAcademy

One of the most popular sites for learning how to code for free, CodeAcademy is home to over 24 million students who have built their skills. The interactive learning approach lets you apply what you’ve learned immediately. Over 300 million hours of free coding content are available to check out at your leisure. Like most coding platforms, you can learn languages such as:

  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • HTML
  • PHP
  • jQuery
  • Python
  • PHP
  • Ruby

CodeAcademy is particularly effective for beginners because you get instant feedback after submitting your coding efforts. When you make mistakes, you’ll find out exactly where you went wrong, allowing you to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

Codewars

Codewars by Qualified is definitely one of the most versatile free platforms for learning how to code. There are dozens of languages you can learn – too many to list right here. Options range from C++ and C# to Ruby, Python, Lean, Java, PHP, Scala, and countless others.

Codewars teaches you your programming language in-depth by selecting challenges designed to put your mind to the test. The goal for each challenge is to help you sharpen your knowledge over time, with tasks that get progressively more difficult over time.

The cool thing about Codewars is it allows you to see how you respond to challenges compared to how other coders have tackled the same issues.

Code.Org

Designed for a younger community of would-be coders, Code.org is an engaging and highly accessible introduction to coding. With around 60 million students worldwide, the Code.org platform gives you access to a wide range of different learning opportunities intended to suit different needs and learning levels.

The Code.org environment is built on a desire to bring coding into the standard curriculum. You can dive into full one-hour tutorials, or you can experiment with a more structured approach to learning, which is ideal for people with different learning styles. There’s also a huge catalog of courses extending from basic coding for younger kids all the way to University-level education.

Free Code Camp

A diverse option in our free coding website list, Free Code Camp is all about developing your coding knowledge while simultaneously networking with other like-minded people in the industry. The solution allows you to learn coding by participating in challenges – which is ideal if you want to put your skills to the test as soon as possible.

To help you jump in, you’ll have access to a range of courses and tutorials designed to help you understand and overcome each challenge. You can even code for non-profits on the platform and build tradeable projects in languages like:

  • HTML5
  • Javascript
  • Node.JS
  • CSS3
  • React.JS
  • Databases
  • Git

If you’re a little nervous about the concept of coding alone, you’ll have a full community to work within the Free Code Camp. You might even meet someone you can work with in the years ahead.

Code Conquest

Code Conquest is less of a course website and more of a comprehensive guide for beginners diving into the world of code. This amazing platform will help you understand all of the basics of coding in no time – even if you’re brand-new to the landscape. You can find out what coding is all about, learn which languages are best to learn for your needs, and more.

The website is full of resources for all kinds of coders, including comprehensive tutorials, reviews, a knowledge center, training packs, and more. You can even choose from a range of languages like:

  • CSS
  • HTML
  • PHP
  • jQuery
  • Ruby
  • JavaScript
  • Python
  • MySQL

To help you figure out where you should get started, the Code Conquest website also gives you recommendations on which tutorials to take next.

W3Schools

One of the better-known free websites for coding on the market today, W3Schools is an environment packed full of example codes, resources, tutorials, exercises, and libraries to help you learn how to code. The site is one of the largest in the world for developers.

To begin coding with W3 Schools, you’ll need to choose the programming language that’s right for you, then either jump into the program immediately or select from a range of learning options. The site comes with a handy quiz to help you define your knowledge level.

Languages range from CSS to SQL, JavaScript, HTML, Python, Java, C++, and many more.

Code Avengers

Code Avengers offers a fun and interactive approach to learning how to program and code. There are various course options to teach you how to create everything from games and apps to entire websites. The good thing about the Code Avengers website is you don’t need a lot of spare time to start learning. Each course takes around 12 hours to complete.

You can choose from languages like HTML, CSS, Python, jQuery, JavaScript, and more, and connect with a wide selection of similar coding enthusiasts, just like you. The biggest downside is that the free trial only lasts for seven days before you’ll need to pay to use the full program.

The Code Player

A simple and effective website for learning how to code and building your existing skills. There are tons of videos and demos to walk you through the process of learning how to code from scratch. All you need to do is click on one of the things you want to learn how to do, like creating a simple web page, and the site will give you a video walkthrough.

Though a little simple compared to other coding resources, the Code Player still has a lot of great video guidance to help beginners jump into various languages. For example, you can learn about CSS and HTML or check out various tools to help you make a more effective website.

CodeGym

If you’re particularly interested in learning about Java, the CodeGym is probably the website for you. This online Java programming course teaches you the basics of Java by allowing you to dive into various tasks. You can get involved with various exercises depending on your existing skill level and play around with games designed to teach you more about the coding landscape.

This website is fantastic for people in all stages of the coding journey. Whenever you suggest a solution to a challenge, the website will give you immediate feedback to learn from. There are more than 500 hours of Java coding exercises and educational resources to explore.

The Odin Project

One of the better-known free coding websites on the market, the Odin Project aims to take the headaches and frustration out of learning web development. If you’re a beginner looking to develop a career in coding, then the Odin Project will give you all the pieces of the puzzle required to decide exactly where you want to go and build the appropriate skills.

This site offers a full-stack curriculum of coding education options, with tons of challenges, tasks, and exercises to help you put your newly gained knowledge to the test. You’ll learn how to program in languages like CSS and HTML, explore the basics of JavaScript and Ruby, and even get tips on how to get hired when your skills are maxed out.

Plural Sight

Previously known as Code School, Plural Sight is a fantastic online learning platform that allows you to build your knowledge through a range of paid and free courses. The comprehensive platform is organized into a wide selection of different learning paths. You can choose how you want to develop your skills based on your chosen language and your existing skillset.

You choose an education path created by professional instructors to achieve specific outcomes, and Plural Sight gives you all the material you need. You can also practice what you’ve learned during the course in your browser and get immediate feedback on what you need to work on. There’s even a gamification aspect that allows you to earn points for every course level you complete.

MIT Open Courseware

Imagine how amazing it would be to get accepted to MIT to learn your new coding skills? What if you didn’t have to go through the headache of an official application. If you have a computer and internet access, you can explore MIT’s course material easily through the MIT Open Courseware website. This dedicated website gives you an insight into all of the courses and materials learned by students at MIT.

You can browse through all the courses available in the programming landscape and filter through results based on things like course features. For instance, you might specifically look for courses with their own online textbook, lecture notes, and videos. It’s a great way to get an insight into how one of the most reputable universities in the world offers coding education.

Web Fundamentals

We’ve already looked at a website offering coding resources specifically for Java, now let’s take a look at one designed for HTML5. Launched about 11 years ago as HTML5 Rocks, the Web Fundamentals website is packed full of tutorials, resources, and insights into the most recent updates to HTML5. This open-source environment allows developers and programmers to really get active with their skills.

You can play around with some of the code already available on the website, and explore tutorials authored by a range of amazing individuals. Although these courses are very comprehensive, it’s worth noting that they might not be the perfect choice for true beginners, as the tutorials can be more complex than most.

Dash General Assembly

If you’re keen to learn the essentials of coding in some of the most popular languages, like CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, then Dash General Assembly is the site for you. This website offers fun and free courses which will guide you through the basics of web development. You even get interactive tasks and challenges you can leverage within your browser, with no downloads required.

Users learn how to do a range of amazing things with this website, including how to code HTML5, build a beautiful website, and balance your layouts for aesthetic appeal and usability. You can even design dynamic interfaces where you can add aminations and effects. Dash General Assembly is a fantastic tool for anyone keen to get started in the world of coding.

Codeasy.net

Finally, Codeasy.net promises beginners a fast and simple way to start learning how to code, while having plenty of fun. This exciting website immerses you within a digital story which takes you on an adventure through the basics of coding. You’ll need to learn real-life coding skills to navigate your way through the rest of the story, which means you can develop your C# knowledge as you go.

This is one of the more unique tools for learning how to code that we’ve found so far. It’s a great way to discover the basics of C# without being bogged down in boring lectures. Remember, though, this website is intended for complete beginners, so you might find it a little basic if you already know some of the coding essentials.

Free Websites for Learning to Code

Free coding websites are an excellent way to develop your skills and unlock new opportunities in the world of coding. If you’re keen to jump into a new career as a programmer or coding developer, make sure you check out some of the options above. There’s no doubt you’ll find a site capable of giving you the boost you need.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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