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Websites as we know them are going to change very soon. The days of text, images, and basic interactions in a 2D browser window have served us well, but virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences are getting better all the time. Developers and designers need to think beyond the browser window and prepare for an immersive future.

Many have been very skeptical about VR and AR in the past because despite grand promises about what they would achieve, they’ve mostly failed to deliver on the scale that the industry hoped for.

But it’s different this time: industry leaders like Meta, Apple, and Microsoft are pursuing a range of different mixed reality projects; they see the opportunity and are dropping hints about what’s next.

In a survey from Perkins Coie LLP and the XR Association, nearly 9 in 10 respondents said that by the year 2025, immersive technologies—including augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality — will be as ubiquitous as mobile devices.

That’s a bold prediction, but it could be our new reality.

Use Cases

VR and AR aren’t a logical fit for every website, and that’s fine. There’s no need to force an immersive experience on something better suited to a standard viewing experience.

But when they’re done right, 3D experiences can add a lot to your website. Check out the demo experience from Mozilla, the 3D tours from Matterport, and the immersive storytelling from Within.

Here are a few areas where these technologies shine:

  • Retail – VR can be used to provide a virtual showroom where customers browse through products. AR can even bring the products into your home by showing you how a piece of furniture will fit in your room, what a painting will look like on your wall, or in Apple’s case, how a product will look on your desk.
  • News – Coverage of events can be enriched by providing a 360-degree view and placing viewers in the center of the story.
  • Training – AR can generate virtual overlays over physical equipment so employees can have hands-on training that’s more effective.

Define Your Platform

Adding immersive experiences to your website will require various skills based on what you’re trying to create. Whether you’re new to web development or are a seasoned developer with many years of experience, the main difference from classic web development is that you’re switching from a 2D to a 3D experience. Development in VR/AR is much closer to developing 3D video games than creating web applications.

First of all, you need to decide on the hardware that you’re building for. Are your viewers mainly using computers, smartphones, or a headset like the Oculus Quest? Each hardware category offers a different set of capabilities for what’s possible.

Next, when we look at 3D engines and frameworks on the market, some big names like Unity, Unreal Engine, and CRYENGINE stand out. Most of these engines were spun out of game development and are based on programming languages like C, C++, or C#. While very powerful, they’re overkill for anyone trying to create a basic immersive web experience.

The good news for web developers is that the WebXR Device API is an open standard specified by the W3C with a JavaScript API that makes immersive experiences possible in the browser. So if you already have a background in web development, you can use your knowledge of JavaScript to get started.

There are some useful frameworks and platforms that make working with WebXR more convenient:

  • A-Frame – A web framework for building 3D experiences.
  • React 360 – A framework for the creation of interactive 360-degree experiences that run in the web browser. As the name already suggests, it builds on React and reuses the concepts you already know.
  • Amazon Sumerian – A managed service that lets you create and run 3D, AR, and VR applications. Since it’s integrated into the AWS ecosystem, it’s also possible to add AI-enabled elements into your generated world.

Create Your Content

No one wants to read long blocks of text in 3D. Since we’re talking about visual experiences, it’s logical that the emphasis should be on creating content that is pleasing to the eye and interesting to look at. What works on a normal website probably isn’t going to feel natural in a 3D environment, so you need to decide what visuals you should create to suit the format.

What high-resolution images and assets do you need? Can you add videos? How about 360-degree videos? Will viewers just be looking at something, or will they be able to interact with it?

You also can’t forget about sound because it’s a critical part of immersive experiences. What music and sounds should you create to make the content come alive?

Not everyone is going to have the latest and greatest device or 5G coverage. The requirements for bandwidth and transmission quality are much higher with 3D content. A few milliseconds of latency can go unnoticed on a typical website, but in a VR/AR setting, it can make the experience laggy or unusable.

Try to optimize your content to be the highest quality it can be within a reasonable file size. If the experience starts to suffer from too many assets downloading at the same time, it’s better to create a more streamlined experience that maintains a high performance rate.

It’s important to consider your hosting infrastructure, as well. This shouldn’t be a big problem, but it is worth mentioning that you need to add new content types to your configurations, and your CDN needs to support these new types, too.

Make Your Content Flexible

When we’re talking about getting your website ready for immersive experiences, we’re not just talking about having people scroll through your regular website in VR. That isn’t compelling for your audience.

The idea is to take some content that’s already on your website and separate it from the presentation layer so you can use it in a 3D environment or any other platform that you want. Classic content management takes place in silos, which means you cannot easily reuse the content from your website.

This separation can be achieved by using a classic database, but if you want developers and content teams to collaborate, a headless CMS is front-end agnostic and more user friendly.

Start Experimenting Today

Building 3D content experiences may seem intimidating, but as we’ve seen, you likely already have the web development skills necessary to get started and try out some different ideas.

What you build today will prepare you for the 3D future of tomorrow.

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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The post How to Prepare for the Immersive Web first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

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Today, we discuss C# code quality and a variety of errors by the example of CMS DotNetNuke. We’re going to dig into its source code. You’re going to need a cup of coffee…

DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke is an open-source content management system (CMS) written mainly in C#. The source code is available on GitHub. The project is part of the .NET Foundation.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

Want to know which of the top blogging platforms you should consider using this year?

Blogging is still one of the best ways to draw attention to your brand, generate thought leadership, and build your credibility. Research suggests that US internet users spend 3x more of their browsing time on blogs than on email. Additionally, people view about 20 billion blog pages on average each month. 

So, how do you join the blogging revolution? You’ll need the right platform. 

Essentially, a blogging platform is a CMS (Content Management System) which supports blog creation. Many come with additional tools like SEO support and integrations with email marketing too. There are tons of great blogging platforms out there, which means knowing where to start searching can be tough. To help you, we’ve put together this list of the leading blogging platforms.

What to Look for in a Blogging Platform

Before we sort through our list of the leading blogging platforms, let’s start with a quick overview of what the best blogging solutions typically include. Notably, depending on what you’re going to be using your blog for, you may have other features to prioritize besides those listed here. These features will act as a starting point for your comparisons:

Ease of Use

Uploading, publishing, and sharing your blog shouldn’t be a headache. 

There are many website builders out there that seem to have blogging tacked on as an “extra” rather than having it built into the foundations of the software. This often leads to a clunky backend experience when you’re building your site. 

If you’re a new blogger or don’t want to spend time messing around with HTML and coding, make sure that your blogging environment is easy to use. The simpler it is to distribute your content, the more likely you’ll stick to your blogging strategy. 

Cost and Revenue Opportunities

Many of the top blogging platforms come with a fee to think about. Even if you use an open-source platform for blogging, you still need to consider domain names, hosting, and security costs. Finding the right balance between spend and return on investment is crucial. 

Remember, just because a blogging platform is cheap doesn’t mean it’s good value. Similarly, expensive software may not be the best for your business. Ideally, you want something that’s going to deliver a good blogging experience, combined with plenty of opportunities to grow your readership for the lowest possible price. 

If you want to get the best return on investment, focus on the kind of monetization options you can access with each platform. Medium, for instance, has a partner program that allows you to earn money on the posts that customers read. Platforms like Wix, WordPress, and Squarespace can all offer earning opportunities too. You can use them to place certain content behind a paywall, create subscriptions, and sell products or services. 

Marketing and Growth Tools

Most blogging platforms will come with at least some tools to help you build your online presence. Wix and WordPress integrate with Google marketing, so you can purchase PPC campaigns and track your organic content through an SEO dashboard. 

The majority of CMS tools equipped with blogging capabilities also come with integrations for your email marketing service. This ensures you can create automated campaigns that inform your audience whenever a new blog post goes live. 

One of the best things about WordPress is how many plugins you can access to boost your readership levels. Access to extra tools like SEO solutions, landing form creators, and pop-ups can all boost your chances of converting and capturing leads. 

Custom Branding

If you’re keen to save money on your blogging platform, you might be tempted to start with a free version of a popular service. This is fine when you’re just testing the waters. However, you will need to spend extra if you want to remove the ads that other website builders put on your site. For instance, Wix’s free version will place ads on your pages and show the Wix identity in your footer. 

To build your own brand identity, you’re going to need to replace that CMS branding with your own. Look for a blogging service where you can buy your own domain name, customize your themes, and add your own colors, images, and logos into the mix. 

While tools like Medium won’t run ads on your campaigns, they also don’t allow you to customize your site to showcase your brand personality. It’s much easier to build a memorable identity when you can control what your site looks like. 

Upkeep and Maintenance

This ties in a little with the “ease of use” factor above. Before you invest in any blogging platform, think about how much work it’s going to require. A hosted blogging platform is pretty easy to manage because you don’t have to worry about security and uptime yourself.

Products like Wix and Squarespace will give you access to SSL certificates, patch security issues on your behalf, and handle other complicated site maintenance issues. WordPress and other open-source solutions require you to take more of a hands-on approach. You’ll need to manage your own web hosting and check the security of your site regularly. 

Flexibility

This feature is often overlooked in some guides to the best blogging platforms, but it’s also growing increasingly more important in today’s digital age. If you want your website to work for years to come, you need to make sure it’s flexible. This could mean that you look for something that allows you to upload different kinds of content, like written blogs and connecting podcasts. 

It could also mean investing in a service that has a lot of integrations and add-on options available. Plugins are fantastic for extending the functionality of your blog without having to move your entire site to another location. 

The right plugins can even allow you to transform your blog into a store if you decide to start selling your services or products later. 

The Best Blogging Platforms for 2021

Now we’ve covered what to look for in a blogging platform, we can begin to explore some of the top platforms on the market today. We’ve chosen these platforms for their ease of use, flexibility, performance, customization options, and value. 

WordPress

The best-known and most popular blogging platform in the world, WordPress is the go-to choice for most bloggers and website creators. Currently, there are around 64 million websites actively using WordPress as their chosen CMS. Usage stats also show that around 400 million people visit WordPress websites every month. 

WordPress powers most of the internet as one of the most flexible and easy-to-use platforms around. The biggest decision most users need to make is between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. 

You can create a blog for free at WordPress.com, and the company will host your site for you. However, you have to use a subdomain (rather than your own domain) with the free version. You’ll also lose control of your ads with the free package until you upgrade to a premium plan. 

A personal plan on WordPress.com starts at about $4 per month, and it removes all ads from your site. The more functionality you need, the more you’ll need to upgrade. WordPress.com is very easy to use and requires minimal initial setup, but it’s not very scalable. There are no custom themes, and you don’t technically “own” your blog this way. 

WordPress.org is a different story. With WordPress.org, you’re accessing an open-source blogging platform that allows you to build your site from scratch. You do need to purchase your own domain name and hosting with this service, but the software is free to use. 

WordPress.org is a lot more appealing to most bloggers because it’s so customizable. Features include:

  • Free and premium themes that you can customize to suit your brand;
  • Thousands of plugins to help with security, SEO, subscriptions, and more;
  • Gutenberg block editors to make creating and publishing blogs easy;
  • Tons of SEO friendly solutions to help you stand out online;
  • Access to a huge community of experts;
  • Infinite control over your design options;
  • Advanced user permissions and roles.

Pricing: WordPress.org is different from most blogging platforms because the foundation technology is free. You just pay for the a-la-carte options, like plugins, hosting, and domain name subscriptions. This means you can choose how expensive your site is going to be.

Pros:

  • Extremely easy to use with lots of community support available;
  • Free platform (though you do need to pay for the domain and hosting);
  • Lots of customization and plugin options to expand site functionality;
  • Search engine friendly as-standard, to help you grow;
  • Plenty of ways to make your brand stand out.

Cons:

  • It can be difficult to control your own website at first;
  • You have to manage your own backup and security;
  • Extra costs can quickly build up.

Squarespace

Squarespace is one of the more popular website design and blogging tools for people with a creative streak. Unlike WordPress.org, Squarespace gives you everything you need to build your own website straight out of the box. This includes hosting, the option to purchase your own domain name, and access to a range of beautiful templates. 

Squarespace stands out for its focus on small business owners. You can choose from a range of stunning designs and customize them however you choose with a convenient drag-and-drop builder. There’s also a fantastic customer service experience available from Squarespace, with a team that’s ready to help you with anything you need. 

Like many other hosted blogging platforms, you start on Squarespace by choosing the templates you like and customizing from there. There are some limitations in what you can do here, particularly if you have a lot of coding knowledge, making Squarespace less appealing to growing companies or larger brands. On the plus side, you do get features like:

  • Dedicated blogging templates to get you started;
  • Categories, tags, and featured post options;
  • Built-in scheduling for your blog posts;
  • Contributor roles and permissions;
  • Analytics to track your readers’ favorite posts;
  • Email marketing tools;
  • Social media and SEO solutions built-in;
  • Mobile app access.

Pricing: Compared to some of the other leading blogging solutions on the market, Squarespace is also quite affordable. The personal package at $12 per month will power a website with a stunning blog. You can also upgrade to the Business version for $18 per month, or if you decide to start selling your own products through your blog, you can transition to “Basic Commerce” at $26 per month.

Pros:

  • Squarespace is easy to use for beginners;
  • Fantastic range of stunning templates included;
  • SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing included;
  • SSL and HTTPS support;
  • Access to eCommerce features on some plans;
  • Useful analytics tools.

Cons:

  • Not very scalable for bigger brands;
  • Limited in terms of integrations and customization.

Medium

Medium is a different kind of blogging platform to many of the options mentioned here. This isn’t a tool you can use to build your own websites, like Wix or Squarespace. Instead, it’s a community you join with a monthly membership fee. 

Medium comes with a built-in audience, so you can immediately start speaking to customers and generating results from your content. As mentioned above, there’s also a Partner Program, which is free to join. The Partner Program allows you to earn money if people are reading your blogs regularly. 

For companies or individuals who just want to generate brand awareness but don’t want to invest in an entire blog-ready website yet, Medium can be a powerful choice. You can easily share posts and view what other people are posting. The biggest downside is that you can’t build an entire community and earn a fortune through your website with Medium. 

Medium is more like a social networking site, where you can begin to develop thought leadership than a true space to carve out your piece of the online world. But it does feature things like:

  • An easy-to-use environment for publishing content;
  • Analytics and insights into your campaigns;
  • Some design customization for your blog layout;
  • Access to a pre-existing audience of readers;
  • Support for monetization in the Partner program;
  • Access to picture uploading options;
  • Mobile-responsive blog posts.

Pricing: You don’t have to be a paid member of Medium to sign up for the partner program and start publishing blogs. This does make it a pretty good way to enhance your existing blogging strategy if you’re trying to generate more attention online. 

Pros:

  • Free to use for Partners and creators;
  • Excellent for appealing to already-engaged customers;
  • Easy to use, with no coding required;
  • No requirement to create a website or pay for hosting;
  • Communicate with a team of like-minded people.

Cons:

  • Limited customization options;
  • No ownership over your audience or readership;
  • Limitations to how you can make money (no ads).

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is among the most popular platforms for professionals in the world. It’s the go-to place for people in search of reliable ways to develop their professional network. Currently, there are around 756 million members on LinkedIn. When they’re not searching for connections with their peers or chatting about work opportunities, they’re checking out the content on the platform. 

If you’re keen to develop your position as a thought leader but prefer social media accounts to full websites, LinkedIn is the perfect choice. The more you publish on LinkedIn, the more you’ll attract new people who might want to work with you, invest in your company, or just work as part of your team. 

LinkedIn is a great place to generate attention if you’re in the B2B marketplace because most professionals already have their own account. You can also earn social proof by getting people to “endorse” your work. Some of the features of LinkedIn for bloggers include:

  • Private messaging for interactions with connections;
  • Notifications to help you keep track of valuable content;
  • A full profile posting section where you can publish your blogs;
  • A convenient network of active B2B professionals;
  • Endorsements for social proof;
  • A resume and blogging platform in one (you can list your skills);
  • Job searching and employee searching features.

Pricing: It’s free to access a basic membership with LinkedIn, but you will be limited on some of the features you can unlock. For instance, you can only send messages to people already in your network, and you’ll have limited analytics. LinkedIn Premium gives you slightly more functionality, with Business accounts starting at around $29.95 per month. 

Pros: 

  • Tons of people ready to read your blogs;
  • Great for building your professional network;
  • Good environment for thought leadership;
  • Access to extra tools like job listings;
  • Notifications to keep you on top of relevant posts;
  • Engagement options like private messaging;
  • Reports and insights.

Cons: 

  • No access to full website branding;
  • Limits to how you can monetize your content;
  • You don’t own the site or your traffic.

Wix

Easily one of the most popular website building solutions for beginners, Wix can help you build both a blog and a fully-featured website. You can even design your own store with Wix and start selling products whenever you choose. 

Wix is a straightforward site builder which you can use to build a site in a matter of minutes. There are hundreds of website themes to choose from, and you can also add as many customizations as you choose with the convenient drag-and-drop editor. The blog manager section of the CMS is also simple and intuitive, with SEO and analytics built in already. 

Wix aims to make jumping into blogging as quick and painless as possible. Elements like comments, social tools, hashtags, and subscriber forms are already available, and you can add further plugins if you choose. There’s also the option to include sharing buttons for social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, and more. Features of Wix include:

  • An extensive range of blog templates;
  • Drag-and-drop customization (no coding required);
  • Subscriber forms, comments, likes, and categories;
  • Social media connections;
  • Extra features like store access;
  • Analytics and insights;
  • Quick and easy blogging interface.

Pricing: 

The most basic features of the Wix website builder are free to use. With a free Wix account, you’ll get a subdomain where you can’t choose the name of your own website, unfortunately. However, you can add a custom domain for only $4.50 per month. If you want a full premium plan with Wix, costs start at $8.50 per month and extend to $24.50 per month.

Pros:

  • Lots of pre-built blogging themes;
  • Easy customization options with no coding skills required;
  • Quick and easy to load and publish blogs;
  • Connections with social media platforms;
  • Access to various third-party apps and integrations;
  • Free option for beginners.

Cons:

  • Some limitations to the free account;
  • Ecommerce features are limited to paid plans;
  • Not as scalable for bigger companies.

Ghost

Lesser known than some of the options we’ve discussed so far but still brimming with value, Ghost is a minimalist blogging platform that’s all about content creation. Ghost promises a range of ways for you to turn your blogging into a business, with access to customizable templates, newsletter integrations, premium subscriptions, and more. 

The dashboard for Ghost is clean and intuitive, with access to simple sections where you can add tags to your posts, create drafts, track published content, and access valuable insights. You’ll have an easy view of important metrics like email open rates and numbers of paid members at a glance. You can also find integrations to make your Ghost experience even better. 

Ghost works alongside things like Buffer, Stripe, Twitter, Slack, MailChimp, and many other tools so you can take your blog to the next level. There’s no need for any coding knowledge, and because everything is written in JavaScript, it’s ultra-fast too. Features include:

  • Easy-to-use and intuitive interface;
  • Blogging and writing focused;
  • Clean and clutter-free design;
  • Integrations with various powerful tools;
  • Super-fast JavaScript coding;
  • Lots of templates and customizations;
  • Comment, mobile apps, A/B testing, and more;
  • Analytics and reporting.

Pricing: There’s a 14-day free trial to get you started with Ghost, then subscriptions start at $9 per month when billed annually for up to 1,000 members, 1 staff user, 2k views per month, and an SSL and CDN. The same plan is $15 per month billed monthly. Prices go all the way up to $199 per month billed annually, or $249 per month for 1 million views per month, 35,000 members, 15 staff users, and a 99.99% uptime SLA. 

Pros: 

  • Focus on writing and blogging;
  • Clutter-free and clean backend environment;
  • Easy to use and speedy performance;
  • Lots of packages to choose from;
  • Great integration options.

Cons:

  • Some limitations in scalability;
  • Complicated setup when installed;
  • Not a huge number of themes.

Choosing Your Blogging Platform

Whether you’re blogging because you want to build your personal brand or you’re looking for a way to strengthen sales opportunities for your company, you’re going to need the right blogging platform. The options above are just some of the best blogging solutions available right now. 

Remember, do your research and explore the free versions available whenever possible, so you can confidently invest in the software that’s best for you.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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The post Top Blogging Platforms Worth Considering in 2021 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.


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We’ve been big fans of Ghost since it first launched via a Kickstarter campaign way back in 2013. Ghost 4.0 has just been released, and the host of new features is another giant leap forward for the popular blogging platform.

The content management space is one of the most crowded for startups; there are traditional CMS, headless CMS, site builders, and the omnipresent WordPress, which, if current trends persist, will power 729% of the web by next Thursday.

Ghost is a blog-focused CMS, as WordPress is. Unlike WordPress, it’s minimal, fast, and a pleasure to use.

To survive in the competitive space, Ghost has niched-down to specializing in monetized content — charging membership for sites to bring in revenue for the site owner (Ghost doesn’t charge any commission on this income). As part of that effort, Ghost 4.0’s new engagement-centered dashboard is designed to help you fine-tune your content for profitability.

For any release right now, a dark mode is almost mandatory, and Ghost 4.0 includes it. It may sound like a vanity feature, but once you find yourself working late writing and editing content, your battery and your eyes will thank you for it.

Other notable features include a brand new theme store with professional templates that install with a single click and built-in email newsletters to help foster a sense of site-loyalty among your fanbase.

Ghost is one of the best writing experiences in its class and one of the best publishing experiences for individual creators. If you like publishing on Medium, but wish you had more ownership of your content, then you should give Ghost a try.

You can trial Ghost 4.0 free for 14 days; after that, plans start at $9/month.

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Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

How to Make Halftone Gradient in Photoshop

 

Drawing Simple Line Patterns Using HTML5 Canvas

 

10 Online Design Tools You Never Knew You Needed

 

4 Best Content Management Systems (CMS) for Marketing

 

9 Mistakes Designers Still Make

 

6 Visual Design Principles that UX Designers Should Be Aware of

 

Best Way to Lazy Load Images for Maximum Performance

 

17 Stunning Examples of Sites with Horizontal Scrolling

 

Less is a Bore. Why Tech is Finally Embracing Maximalism

 

What Does it Mean to Have a High-Quality Website in 2020?

 

8 Project Management Tips for your Next Web Development Project

 

MergeURL – Shorten Urls for Free Without User Registration

 

13 Design Challenges to Improve and Showcase your Skills

 

How to Find Web Design Clients

 

Waitlist API – Quick and Easy Waitlist with Built in Referral

 

What is the Small Web?

 

24 Beautifully Designed Pricing Page Examples

 

7 Practical Tips for Better Microcopy

 

15 Awesome Developer Home Workstations

 

Pentagram Designs “edgier” Visual Identity for Rolls-Royce

 

Gorgeous Gradients: A Curated Collection of Dreamy Color Transitions

 

Experts Weigh in on the Biden-Harris Logo

 

50+ Modern Fonts to Use on your WordPress Website in 2020

 

15 Florist Websites that will Inspire Every Flower Lover

 

Create your First React Native Android App

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Moving data from one system to another can be a complex process. In this post, we have broken down how to approach data migration in 3 stages:

  • Before you migrate
  • Ready to migrate
  • Once you’ve migrated

Your requirements will take into consideration:

Source de l’article sur DZONE

If we don’t question this kind of design homogenization, do we put ourselves at risk of perpetuating the same mistakes in the years to come? Or is it even a mistake to begin with?

Today, I’m going to look at four things that are likely causing this, and what you can do to break the mold.

1. Education

We used to have a design school in every city in the world, each with its own design style or, at the very least, the encouragement of its designers to be creative and come up with something new.

These days, though, traditional design education isn’t as popular as it once was. According to Design Census 2019, only about a third of working designers have a formal education and degree:

The rest have been trained through a variety of means:

  • Online learning (17%)
  • Self taught (12%)
  • Workshops (10%)
  • Mentorship (6%)
  • Certificate programs (4%)

Cost and convenience are definitely two factors influencing this shift towards online learning methods. And with a wealth of resources online to teach them how to design and code, why not go that route? Plus, designers have to keep learning new things in order to remain competitive, so it’s not as though a degree is the be-all and end-all of their design training.

Plus, there isn’t as much demand for it from employers. Unless you plan on working for one of the top global marketing agencies, many hiring companies just want to see proof in the form of a portfolio and maybe have you do a test job.

Now, I’m not saying that online courses and other informal design education don’t foster creativity. However, in order to make them cost-efficient and quick to get through, they have to focus on teaching essential best practices, which means less room for experimentation. Perhaps more importantly, their curriculums are guided by fewer voices. So, this could likely be one of the culprits.

2. Design Blogs and Vlogs

You have to wonder if all the design blogs out there (yes, like Webdesigner Depot) impair designers’ ability to break free from the homogeneity of websites.

I think the answer to that is both “yes,” and “no”.

Why, Yes?

What is the purpose of a web design blog? Mainly it’s to educate new and existing designers on best practices, new trends, and web standards.

By their very nature, they really should be teaching web designers the same kinds of things. Let me show you an example.

This is a Google search for “web design trends 2020”:

Most design blogs will publish trends predictions around January 1. And herein lies the problem. The writers/designers can only deviate so far from what we know to be true when writing on the same topic… so these sites end up with similar recommendations.

For instance, the top search results recommended similar things for 2020:

  • Dark mode
  • Hand-drawn illustrations
  • Immersive 3D
  • Glowing colors
  • Minimalist navigation
  • Geometric shapes
  • Inclusivity
  • Accessibility

When web designers receive the same guidance no matter where they turn, it’s only logical that they’d end up creating websites that adhere to those same practices.

Why, No?

Because I write for web design publications, I can tell you that there’s a big difference in the kinds of content some of them publish.

For instance, I find that WebDesigner Depot isn’t interested in rehashing what everyone else is writing about this month. We’re given topics that challenge us to think outside the box and present readers with meaningful insights and recommendations.

So, I think that finding design blogs that push the boundaries and don’t just want to recap what everyone else is saying is really important. That’s how web designers are going to master the basic skills they need to succeed while getting inspired to try new things.

3. Designs Tools and Frameworks

This is another one that’s not as cut and dried. I think it depends on the tools used and the intent to use them.

Where Issues Start to Arise

There are certain site builder solutions that you’re going to be hard-pressed to create something innovative with. The same goes with using templates from sources like Dribbble. It’s just the nature of the beast.

If your goal is to create a cheap website very quickly for a client, then you’re probably going to use a cheap builder to do so. With ready-made templates and a lot of the work already done for you, you can create something that looks good with little effort.

When you’re limited by time and cost, of course you’re going to rely on shortcuts like cheap site builders or boring (but professional) design templates.

How to be More Careful

You can run into these kinds of issues with more flexible content management systems like WordPress or frameworks like Bootstrap, too.

Whenever you rely heavily on ready-made templates, pre-defined styles, or pre-built components, you run the risk of someone else’s work informing your own.

The solution is simple: Use demos, templates, UI kits, and so on as a base. Let them lay down the foundation that you work from.

But if you want your website to look different from the sea of lookalikes, you’re going to have to spend much more time developing a unique visual style that’s equally as effective in its mission. Which also means moving beyond clients that have small budgets or low expectations.

4. User Data

Data gathering is an important part of the job you do as a web designer.

You research the target user (or the existing user, when applicable). You look at industry trends as well as the competition to formulate an idea of what you need to build and how you’re going to do it. And you also use resources like Nielsen Norman Group and Think with Google that put out definitive research on what users want.

Even with the most niche of audiences, consumers’ wants and needs are all basically the same. So, obviously, you have to design experiences that align with them. If you deviate too much from what they expect from your site or brand, you run the risk of creating too much friction.

Is This a Bad Thing?

It’s not in terms of usability. If we build simple, predictable and user-friendly interfaces based on data that successfully drive visitors to convert, that’s great. So long as the content remains strong and the UI attractive, there’s nothing wrong with that approach.

But…

This is the same issue presented by templates and site builders. If you do exactly what’s needed and not much more, your site is going to look and act just like everyone else’s. Which comes at the cost of your brand reputation.

Just look at Google’s Material Design. This design system may have made it easier for web and app designers to create new solutions that were user-friendly and responsive, but there was just too much spelled out. And this led to a slew of Material Design lookalikes everywhere you turned.

This is the whole reason why companies take the time to craft a unique selling proposition. Without a USP, brands become interchangeable in the eyes of consumers.

So, again, my suggestion here is to use data to formulate a strategy for building your website. But don’t forget to spend time adding a unique style, and voice of the brand to the site.

Wrap-Up

It seems like, despite all that we’ve learned to do, websites are becoming less and less diverse in terms of design. And I think a lot of that is due to the fact that it’s much easier to design websites today than it was ten, or even five years ago.

Modern-day education, resources, tools, and consumer data take a lot of the questions and the work out of building websites. Which is good… but only to a point.

Unless you’re building websites for clients who have absolutely no budget, you can’t afford to skimp on the creativity and personalization that will set their website apart. Yes, you need to adhere to tried-and-true practices and standards, but beyond that, you should be experimenting.

 

Featured image uses photo by Kari Shea.

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