Two Approaches to Measuring Creative Value

9 septembre 2020/par Service comm.

3 Essential Design Trends, September 2020

A seasonal change is on the horizon and that always has me looking to refresh projects. This month’s design trends provide a few different ways to do that without ripping up your entire website.

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

Animated Heroes (That Aren’t Video)

Hero headers and screens that feature video animation have been popular for a while, but more website designers are experimenting with other types of full-screen moving graphics.

What’s cool about this trend is that it can take on plenty of different forms and look a lot of different ways, meaning that no two websites are identical in this regard.

The other bonus to this trend is that you can add a full-screen animation to almost any style of design without a complete overhaul of the website. You may need a few small tweaks to create a seamless transition from one screen to the next, but it’s a quick, modern design element that you can deploy rather quickly.

Typozon uses a quick motion graphic with plenty of different brand marks to tell the story of their brand identity work. Admittedly, the animation can get a little dizzying if you look at it too long, but the bright colors on the olive background are attention-getting for sure.

Day 1 Club by Spotify opens with a lot of motion in the setup and then settles into subtle motion behind the primary call to action. Shades of black and soft movement bring everything together and help you focus on the bright red button and text overlay.

Kieran Baybutt uses multiple animations for this portfolio website. The most interesting might be on the “second screen.” A couple of things are happening here. The words change with mouse movements as does the background image. There’s also a cool hover pointer featuring portfolio elements that’s in constant motion. There’s a lot going on here, but it makes you want to click around.

Animated or Floating Circles

Circles might be one of the hottest design trends of 2020. They are in all kinds of projects and keep evolving in different ways.

Maybe part of the reason is because of the message that designers are trying to convey in these projects. Circles are associated with harmony and protection. They are used to represent unity, community, and commitment. In motion, circles can also spark feelings of motion or movement with speed determining how chaotic (or not) that movement may be.

This month’s iteration of circle trends is animated. Some circles animate in place, while others seem to float in space on the canvas.

The circles in each example have something in common though – they bring you into the design and encourage interaction with it. (That might be why this website design trend is increasing in popularity all the time.)

The circular motion for the UX+ logo actually helps draw the eye away from all the almost overwhelming animation on the left side of the split-screen design. With plenty of white space surrounding it, the constant movement is just enough to pull attention to the logo and then down the screen to important information about the event.

Katch Me uses circles that seem to float over the background video with a soft “bounce” in place. The animation changes when the mouse hovers over each circle with an expanded action and the ability to move the circle in a larger space. The circles here are actually the call-to-action buttons.

Visually, the circles for Anastasiia Afanasieva’s website look like a mashup of the above examples. There’s a rotating animation for circles that seem to float in space. You have to click through this design though to see the real brilliance in it. Each circle has a hover state that changes the background color of the website (and images in each box) to match the color displayed.

Bright Yellow Coloring

Another website design trend that might be a reflection of the state of the world is in the use of the color yellow. With a global health pandemic, design projects are leaning in to brighter, more cheerful tones to help offset the stress of the world.

For many, yellow can shine just a bit of hope and optimism into gloomier times.

While most of the projects using bright yellow as an eye-popping accent, others are going all in.

Next Big Thing AG uses yellow imagery inside of oversized cutout lettering (another website design trend this year) on a dark background. Even with the darker overall palette, the design feels bright and enticing. You almost want to dive deeper into the design to see what the image behind the letters is and what else the site contains.

Sonya Mudvex uses a full yellow background on her portfolio homepage to stop visitors in their tracks. The rest of the design features a soft gray background and plenty of yellow accents. In addition to great use of color here, there are plenty of other UX tricks in this design, including some geolocation tools if you interact with the ticket validation graphic on the screen.

Upqode uses yellow with a peachy color palette to stand out. The illustrated animations are much more lively thanks to bright coloring. The overall color palette is a bit unexpected, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Conclusion

If this month’s website design trends tell you anything, it’s that interactive elements and animation are a growing part of the conversation. Are you already using these techniques in projects? (If not, it is probably time to think about it.)

You can also see how the influence of what’s happening in the world around us impacts design as well. It can counter other emotions to create a better mental space or mirror what’s happening in the world around us.

7 septembre 2020/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: August 31, 2020 – September 6, 2020

Actualités, Actualités, Business

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.

Adobe Photoshop: All Versions List 1990-2020 [Infographic]

Website Animation Types & Trends that will Dominate your Screen in 2020–2021

Text Fields & Forms Design

Amazon Bottlerocket OS

4 Things Web Designers Can do to Improve UX

Portfolio Must-Have for a Designer

The Design System Encyclopedia

76 Tools for Designers in 2020

Developers, Watch Out for these Burnout Symptoms

Apple Accidentally Approved Malware to Run on MacOS

25 Inspiring Examples of Black Websites

Stitches – The Modern Styling Library

Component Driven User Interfaces

Intel Just Changed its Logo for the First Time since 2006

Nimbella – Simple Serverless Cloud for Developers

10 Habits of Successful Freelance Designers

Web Brutalism, Seamfulness, and Notion

Timely and Timeless Tactics for User-Oriented UX Design

How to Start a Freelance Web Design Business

Nessie – Lightweight Web Browser

5 Excellent Color Palette Generators Every Designer Should Try

7 Blunders You Must Stay Away from While Designing a Logo

Shopify Vs. WooCommerce ECommerce Platform Comparison

Pure CSS Images: 35 Free CSS Cartoon Characters

To Design and Develop an Interactive Globe

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

6 septembre 2020/par Service comm.

5 Best Free Courses and Resources to Level Up As a Web Designer

I often see freelancers on social media asking what the secret is to working fewer hours, making more money, and helping new clients to find them. While those things tend to happen the longer you’ve been freelancing, it doesn’t happen without some effort.

If you’re wondering how you can change things so that your business becomes more profitable and easier to manage, education is the key.

But it’s not just mastering new design techniques that will take you to the next level. It’s important to invest your time in a well-rounded education so that you can grow not just as a web designer, but also as a freelancer and business owner.

The good news is that you don’t have to spend a ton of cash on courses or resources. In the following round-up, I’m going to share some of the best free courses to help you level up.

5 Best Free Courses and Resources for Web Designers

Rather than sign up for Udemy, Skillshare and other premium course membership sites, I recommend taking a bootstrapping approach to self-education. I mean, the whole point in learning new skills and strengthening existing ones is so you can run a better business and make more money, right?

Once you have extra funds to throw at premium courses, definitely explore those options. For now, let’s focus on the free courses and resources that’ll help get you to that next level:

1. edX

edX was created by Harvard and MIT in order to provide university-level training and education to anyone, anywhere. While you can’t get certified without paying a few hundred dollars, you can go through entire courses for free.

Courses are offered over a wide range of categories. As a freelance web designer, you’d do well to focus on the following areas:

Design
Learn more than just how to design beautiful interfaces. Learn about the technical side of it, too — things like AI, IoT, and cybersecurity.

Computer Science
Learn web development and coding.

Business & Management
Learn essential business skills like:

Project management
Finance management
Leadership
Marketing and analysis

Communication
Learn things like branding, negotiation, reputation management, and critical thinking.

2. Envato Tuts+

Envato Tuts+ might be best known for its succinct step-by-step design and development tutorials. However, it has a new section of free video courses to take advantage of.

Although you won’t learn any soft skills here, this is a great resource if you want to master the tools of your trade.

Free courses give you a deeper look at tools like:

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Adobe’s suite of software
Sketch
WordPress
Video conferencing tools

3. YouTube

YouTube is more than just a place to watch entertaining videos. There are some amazing YouTube channels for web designers at all skill levels.

When choosing a design channel and course to follow, look for ones that are well organized. If they’re just posting videos at random without any rhyme or reason, it’ll be difficult to focus on and master one skill set before moving onto the next.

Here are the channels I recommend you follow:

Flux

Learn skills related to:

Web design
Getting started as a freelancer
Strengthening your processes
Building your portfolio
Design theory and strategy

CharliMarieTV

Learn skills related to:

Web design
Building sites with Figma or Webflow
Career paths for designers
Productivity hacks

NNgroup

Learn skills related to UX:

Web design
User psychology
Usability testing
Design thinking
Research and data analysis
Journey mapping
Get access to UX Conference seminars, too

4. Moz Whiteboard Fridays

Even if you don’t offer SEO as a standalone service, it’s important for web designers to understand the role they play in SEO and to stay abreast of the latest and greatest strategies.

If you haven’t tuned in for one of Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays yet, I’d recommend you start now.

Some of the topics might not be relevant to you (like creating a content strategy). However, there are others you’ll get some great tips from, like the one above that talks about creating great visuals, preparing web pages with tags and schema markup, and optimizing for featured snippets.

5. Nir Eyal – Indistractible

Nir Eyal has made a name for himself over the years as an author and presenter on the subject of human psychology and behavior. His first book (Hooked) examined consumer behavior and how to design around it. His second (Indistractible) turned the focus on us — the doers and creators who build experiences and products for consumers.

The first of his free resources to explore is this 30-minute presentation on why we’re so easily distracted and how to keep those distractions (and ourselves) from getting in the way.

The second free resource to snag up is the 80-page workbook available on the homepage. Here’s a preview of what it looks like:

You’ll learn about common distractions, identify those that are specific to you, and then work through exercises to defeat them.

If this is something you’re struggling with, these resources will empower you to make a much-needed change.

BONUS: WebDesigner Depot

Although WebDesigner Depot doesn’t offer video courses, I consider each of the articles contained within this site to be mini-courses of their own. And you’ll learn everything you’ve ever wanted to know about becoming a web designer and growing your freelance business.

Featured image via Unsplash.

3 septembre 2020/par Service comm.

8 Easy Ways To Ruin Your User Onboarding

To understand why user onboarding is such an indispensable tool, we need to empathize with the people using our products; we all come from different backgrounds and cultures, we make different assumptions, and we see the world differently.

User onboarding helps mitigate these differences by making your product’s learning curve less steep.

However, companies often make unfortunate mistakes that hinder user experience and cause frustration. In today’s article, we’ll take a look at eight ways companies ruin their products’ onboarding process.

Let’s dive right in, shall we?

1. No User Onboarding at all

As a part of the team that created a product, you’ve probably spent hundreds of hours going over its features and the most minute detail. Naturally, you know the product like the back of your hand. The user does not.

Naturally, you know the product like the back of your hand. The user does not

We may believe that the app we’ve worked on is straightforward and that user onboarding is probably overkill — but that’s almost never the case. Guiding our users through a product will help with retention, conversion, and their overall satisfaction.

However, there are very rare cases when you can do without user onboarding, here are a few:

Your product is too straightforward to cause any confusion;
Your product has a formulaic structure, similar to that of other products’ in your category, i.e., social media or e-commerce;
Your product relies heavily on Google or iOS design guidelines with common design patterns;
Your product is too complex (enterprise or business-oriented) — in such cases, users need special training, rather than just an onboarding;

2. Assuming That Users “Get It”

One of the vital UX mottos we should always be mindful of is that “we are not our users.” When onboarding them, we always need to assume that they’re at square one. We should communicate with them as if they have no prior knowledge of our product, its terminology, and the way it works.

Providing freshly-registered users with highly contextual information will most likely confuse them. As a result, this will render your attempts to create a helpful onboarding process useless.

3. Onboarding Users on a Single Touchpoint

it’s tempting to brainstorm which features should make it into the onboarding, then design and code them; that’s a very bad idea

The main problem with the previous point is that it’s too contextual for new users. However, providing no context altogether can be problematic as well. This is commonly found in onboarding processes that focus on a single touchpoint while leaving out the rest of the product.

By choosing to inform users of our product’s features, we force them to detour from their “normal” course of action. This comes at the cost of the user’s frustration.

Since we’re asking people to pay this price, it’s best to provide them with information that will also help them navigate the entire product. As a result, this will decrease the number of times we’ll have to distract them from their ordinary flow.

4. Forcing Users Through Onboarding

We’ve previously mentioned that we mustn’t assume that users have any background knowledge about our products.

The opposite argument can be made — experienced users don’t need a basic onboarding process. It will most likely frustrate them, and it won’t provide them with any real value. Also, forcing users through this process will most likely take the onboarding frustration to a whole other level.

This is why it’s essential that we allow them to skip the parts they don’t find useful. This way, we’ll address the knowledge gaps of the people who really want it and need it.

5. Onboarding Based Purely on Assumptions

This is yet another point that’s implicit in “we are not our users”. Oftentimes, it’s tempting to brainstorm which features should make it into the onboarding, then design and code them; that’s a very bad idea.

Here’s what every designer should do instead:

Do user interviews: You should conduct these before having anything designed; user interviews will help you shortlist and prioritize features in terms of their significance, so that the onboarding is focused around the features that matter most.
Do usability testing: Once you have a good idea of what features your users consider most important, design onboarding that reflects that; having completed your design, make sure to conduct at least 5 usability testing sessions with users, so that you can make sure that your design works.

6. Just Letting Users Quit

While we shouldn’t force people to go through onboarding, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t nudge them in the right direction.

find that sweet spot between being front of mind and annoying

People choose not to onboard for many reasons, but showing them around will benefit both parties. Therefore, it’s never wrong to remind them that they can always resume onboarding via email or push notifications (unless you’re too pushy). Make sure to find that sweet spot between being front of mind and annoying.

Similarly, these two mediums are a great way to deliver valuable information as well.

Here’s a great example of an onboarding email from InVision:

And here’s a clever notification from TripPlanner:

Source: clevertap.com

7. Asking For Too Much Information

We need to always be mindful of the fact that the product’s spokesperson should act as a guide during onboarding. Its goal at the very beginning is to build trust.

We can ask for small favors when we’ve built a solid and lasting relationship

Not only is asking for too much information from the get-go unproductive, but it will also undermine the trust that the user already gave us.

It’s best to abstain from asking freshly-registered users for their credit card information. Nearly 100% of businesses care about profits — and there’s no shame in it. However, today’s most successful companies make money by providing users with value. So it’s best to stimulate users to share their financial data in subtler ways while focusing on customer experience.

The same can be said about subjecting the people using your service to extensive questionnaires. At the first steps of our interaction, it’s all about giving and gaining trust. We can ask for small favors when we’ve built a solid and lasting relationship.

8. Onboarding for the Sake of Onboarding

While there are dozens of reasons why you should guide your users through your product, it needs to be done well. A pointless onboarding process that doesn’t provide users with value is more frustrating than the lack thereof.

Onboarding can be a bit frustrating at times. Pointless onboarding will just raise eyebrows. It will slow users down and disengage them, which is exactly the opposite of what we want.

Conclusion

The process of introducing your users to your product is one of the factors that will define its success.

A critical aspect of user onboarding that we need to always take into account is value. Is this detour from our user’s ordinary course of action valuable to them? Will this improve their experience with the product?

Onboarding demands careful and continuous tailoring. Once perfected, this process will help you win new users’ hearts and help you build brand loyalty.

Featured image via Unsplash.

31 août 2020/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: August 24, 2020 – August 30, 2020

Actualités, Actualités, Business

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.

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.

30 août 2020/par Service comm.

12 Best Google Design & Development Tools

Google resembles an iceberg: there’s the part above the water we can see and use everyday; there’s also the part beneath the water, that we don’t see and know little about.

While many of us are concerned about the aspects of Google we don’t see — the parts that threaten our privacy, or monopolize the web — there’s no denying that Google offers some amazing products and tools, many of them free, all from the convenience of a single login.

Today we’re going to take a look at 12 tools from Google that really do bring something positive to the table.

1. Polymer

Polymer is an open-source JavaScript library from Google for building web applications using Web Components. The platform comes with a ton of libraries and tools to help designers and developers unlock the web’s potential by taking advantage of features like HTTP/2, Web Components, and Service Workers.

The main feature of Polymer is Web Components. With Web Components, you can share custom elements to any site, work seamlessly with any browser’s built-in elements, and effectively use frameworks of all kinds. Products like LitElement (a simple base class for creating fast, lightweight web components) and PWA Starter Kit make Polymer easy to use. If you like, you can build your app entirely out of Web Components.

2. Lighthouse

Google Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. The software allows you to audit web pages for performance, SEO, accessibility, and more. You can run Lighthouse using ChromeDevTools, directly from the command line, or as a Node module.

To use Lighthouse in Google Chrome, just go to the URL you want to audit (you can audit any URL on the web), open ChromeDevTools, and click the Audits tab. After you have run the audit, Lighthouse will give you an in-depth report on the web page.

With these reports, you will see which parts of your web page you need to optimize. Each report has a reference doc that explains why that audit is important and also shows you the steps you can take to fix it.

You can also use Lighthouse CL to prevent regression on your sites. Using Lighthouse Viewer, you can view and share reports online. You can also share reports as JSON or GitHub Gists.

Lighthouse also comes with a feature called Stack Packs that allows Lighthouse to detect what platform a site is built on. It also displays specific stack-based recommendations.

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the gold standard of analytics services. Google analytics can be installed on your site for free with a small amount of JavaScript and allows you to see all kinds of details about your site visitors, like what browser they’re using, and where they’re from.

By using Google Analytics you can make decisions about your site based on science, and therefore be somewhat confident that the decisions you make will result in the outcome you are expecting.

4. Flutter

Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit for building natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. The toolkit is open source and free to use. The best part of Flutter is that it works with existing code.

The toolkit has a layered architecture that allows for full customization, which results in fast rendering and flexible designs. It also comes with fully-customizable widgets that allow you to build native interfaces in minutes. With these widgets, you will be able to add platform features such as scrolling, navigation, icons, and fonts to provide a full native performance on both iOS and Android.

Flutter also has a feature called hot reload that allows you to easily build UIs, add new features, and fix bugs faster. You can also compile Flutter code to native ARM machine code using Dart native compilers.

5. Google API Explorer

Google has a huge library of APIs that are available to developers but finding these APIs can be difficult. Google API Explorer makes it easy for developers to locate any API. On the Google API Explorer web page, you will see a complete list of the entire API library. You can easily scroll through the list or use the search box to filter through the API list.

The best part of Google API Explorer is that each link to a reference page comes with more details on how to use the API. API Explorer is an excellent way to try out methods in the Monitoring API without having to write any code.

6. Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a project from the Google Chrome team. The platform enables web developers to control a Chrome (or any other Chrome DevTools Protocol based browser) and execute common actions, much like in a real browser. Puppeteer is also a Node library and it provides a high-level API for working with headless Chrome. It is also a useful tool for scraping, testing, and automating web pages.

Here are some things you can do with Puppeteer: generate screenshots and PDFs of pages, UI testing, test Chrome Extensions, automate form submission, generate pre-rendered content, and crawl Single-Page Applications.

7. Codelabs

Google Developer Codelabs is a handy tool for beginner developers and even advanced developers who want to improve their knowledge. Codelabs provide a guided, tutorial, hands-on coding experience. Codelabs’ site is broken down into several tutorial sessions on different topics.

With the tutorials on Codelabs, you can learn how to build applications from scratch. Some of the tutorial categories include Augmented reality, TensorFlow, Analytics, Virtual Analytics, G Suite, Search, Google Compute Engine, and Google APIs on iOS.

8. Color Tool

Color Tool makes it easy for web designers to create, share, and apply colors to their UI. It also measures the accessibility level for any color combination before exporting to the palette. The tool comes with 6 user interfaces and offers over 250 colors to choose from.

The tool is also very easy to use. All you need to do is pick a color and apply it to the primary color scheme; switch to the secondary color scheme, and pick another color. You can also switch to Custom to pick your own colors. After you have selected all your colors, use the Accessibility feature to check if all is good before exporting it to your palette.

9. Workbox

Workbox is a set of JavaScript libraries and Node modules. The JavaScript libraries make it easy to add offline support to web apps. The Node modules make it easy to cache assets and offer other features to help users build Progressive Web Apps. Some of these features include pre-caching, runtime caching, request routing, background sync, debugging, and greater flexibility than sw-precache and sw-toolbox.

With Workbox, you can add a quick rule that enables you to cache Google fonts, images, JavaScript, and CSS files. Caching these files will make your web page to run faster and also consume less storage. You can also pre-cache your files in your web app using their CLI, Node module, or webpack plugin.

10. PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a handy tool from Google Developers that analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions on how to make the page faster. It gives reports on the performance of a web page on both desktop and mobile devices. At the top of the report, PageSpeed Insights provides a score that summarizes the page’s performance.

11. AMP on Google

AMP pages load faster and also look better than standard HTML pages on mobile devices. AMP on Google allows you to enhance your AMP pages across Google. It is a web component framework that allows you to create user-first websites, ads, emails, and stories. One benefit of AMP is that it allows your web pages to load almost instantly across all devices and platforms hence improving the user’s experience.

12. Window Resizer

When creating websites, it is important that developers test them for responsive design – this is where Window Resizer comes in. Window Resizer is a Chrome extension that resizes the browser window so that you can test your responsive design on different screen resolutions. The common screen sizes offered are desktop, laptop, and mobile, but you can also add custom screen sizes.

Featured image via Unsplash.

28 août 2020/par Service comm.

20 Freshest Web Designs, August 2020

In this month’s collection of the freshest web designs from the last four weeks the dominant trend is attention to detail.

You’ll find plenty of animation, in fact, almost every one of these sites uses animation to a greater or lesser degree. Let’s dive in:

Globekit

Globekit is a tool that allows developers to quickly create animated and interactive globes and embed them on web pages. Its site features some exceptional 3D animation.

Yolélé

Yolélé is food company built around fonio, a West African super grain. Its site features a great page transition, and the landing page carousel is one of the few examples of horizontal scrolling we’ve seen work well.

Begonia

Begonia is a Taiwanese design agency with an impressive client list. Its site features animated typography, a super bold splash screen, and some surreal artwork. There’s so much here, it’s almost overwhelming.

Next Big Thing

Next Big Thing is an agency supporting the full lifecycle of start-ups. Its site is clearly targeting tech-based clients, and there are some lovely transitions. The masked hero transition on scroll is delightful.

Proper

We all have every reason for the odd sleepless night right now, but regular sleep is essential for our health. Proper offers sleep solutions from coaching to supplements on its subtly shaded site.

The Oyster & Fish House

The site for The Oyster & Fish House is packed with some delightful details. We love the subtle wave textures, the photography has a nostalgic feel, and the typography is perfectly sophisticated.

Drink Sustainably

Fat Tire produces America’s first certified carbon neutral beer, and Drink Sustainably has been produced to explain the concept. We love the vintage advertising style of the artwork.

Treaty

It seems like every week there’s a new CBD brand launching. What we like about Treaty’s site is the slick fullscreen video, the inclusion of botanical illustrations, and the really brave use of whitespace.

Studio Louise

You’re greeted on Studio Louise’s site by a shot of trees with two random shapes; as you scroll the shapes morph and relocate to the top right corner, and you suddenly realize they’re an “S” and an “L”, cue: smiles.

Wünder

Another site for a CBD product, this time a vibrantly branded sparkling beverage. Wünder’s site features enticing photography, an on-trend color palette, and credible typography.

Seal + Co

Some professions lend themselves to exciting, aspirational sites, and some companies are accountancy firms. However Seal + Co’s site creates the impression of a modern, capable, and imaginative firm.

DocSpo

There is some lovely, 3D animation on the DocSpo site. The company is a Swedish startup enabling digital business proposals, and its site is bold, Appleesque, and packed with nice details.

Motley

We never get tired of particle effects, like the one employed by Finland-based agency Motley. There’s some superb work in the portfolio, and it’s great to see a blog using Old Master paintings for thumbnails.

The Ornamental

The Ornamental sources leather goods for wealthy individuals, and luxury lifestyle firms. Its site is minimal, with some drool-worthy handbags. We particularly liked the image zoom hover effect in the store.

G.F Smith

G.F Smith is one of the world’s leading paper suppliers. Its redesigned site is much simpler than its last, with some lovely touches, like the varied paper photography when you hover over product thumbnails.

Raters

Raters is a new app that lets you discover new movies via reviews from people you trust. This simple site does an exceptional job of previewing the app, across multiple device sizes.

Fleava

There’s a whole heap of nice interactive details on Fleava’s site, from the cursor-following circles when hovering over links, to the way the thumbnails are squeezed when dragging through projects.

The Story of Babushka

A babushka doll is a traditional Russian toy, made up of dolls, nested inside dolls. The Story of Babushka uses the toy as a metaphor for growth in this children’s book, and the accompanying animated website.

Grand Matter

After the uniformity of the 2010s, there are a wealth of illustration styles being explored across the web. Grand Matter is an artist agency that represents some amazing talent, and we love the illustration they chose themselves.

Nathan Young

Nathan Young’s site does exactly what it needs to do: Providing case studies for his design work. The fade-out on scroll is a simple device that elevates the whole site experience.

24 août 2020/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: August 17, 2020 – August 23, 2020

Actualités, Actualités, Business

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.

10 Best Logo Fonts for your Next Logo Project

UI Playbook – The Documented Collection of UI Components

10 Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best Web Hosting Service

Best Practices in Responsive Landing Page Creation for Beginners

19 Useful Google Apps Scripts to Automate Google Drive

Simple, Open Source Alternative to Google Analytics

EazyCSS – No Code CSS Editor for any Website

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23 août 2020/par Service comm.

The Most Appreciated Web Solutions of 2020

In this article you will find the most appreciated web solutions of 2020.

To create this list we took into account the following considerations: The popularity of the product or the service; How many users it has; How many times it was downloaded or installed; The level of efficiency; What you get for your money.

You’ll find WordPress themes and plugins, an affordable logo design contest, logo creators, website builders, web development services, and even more. Let’s get started…

1. WooCommerce Support

WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress, being used by all kind of merchants, both small and large companies.

WPcustomify is 100% focused on WooCommerce, having huge experience. They will help you with everything you need:

WooCommerce Plugin Integration
Configuration Support
Support Services

Get in touch with them and let the experts manage all the issues and errors of your WooCommerce. Make the best out of your store, and help it get more traffic and convert better, by using the experience of WPcustomify.

2. actiTIME

Design and development projects require a high degree of precision and organization. To meet desired goals on time and budget, teams should adhere to initial estimates and deadlines impeccably. Besides, to be efficient and productive, they need to manage tasks and monitor progress in a systematic way.

actiTIME can assist developers and their managers in attaining these objectives effortlessly. As a high-quality and user-friendly timesheet app, it allows users to keep a detailed record of hours spent on multiple tasks and, in this way, collect data for consequent client billing and invoicing, as well as performance and productivity analysis.

However, actiTIME is more than just another time tracker – it includes powerful project management functionality that can help you:

Manage project scope by adding new tasks and creating a detailed work breakdown;
Allocate tasks to different team members;
Set up estimates, deadlines and budgets;
Review current work progress and modify task statuses on the Kanban board or in a simple list format;
Receive notifications whenever the risk of cost and time overrun arises.

actiTIME’s flexibility makes it an excellent choice for both individuals and teams of any size. The tool can be configured to meet varying management needs and integrated with many other useful apps through Zapier or API. In addition, you can always use the actiTIME timer through the Chrome extension in Jira, Github and GitLab, which will allow you to track hours without any distractions from the primary work process. Sign up for a free actiTIME trial and bring your productivity to the next level.

3. Total

Total is one of the most complete WordPress theme that you can buy in 2020, being filled with 80+ builder modules, 40+ premade demos that you can install with 1-click, and over 500+ styling options.

This theme has over 43k happy users and it is used by some of the best websites in the world.

This theme is developed and maintained by WordPress experts that have been a part of the WP community for over 10 years.

4. Webdesign Toolbox

Webdesign Toolbox will become a web design tools encyclopedia, currently featuring 965 resources in 78 different categories. Everybody was waiting for such a place and now it is live and heavily updated each month.

I just found out about this place and I can say that it is super. Having all the tools and services in a single place, very well categorized is super helpful. Now you don’t have to lose time on search engines and on ads (who pays more will get in front), you have everything at your disposal, in front of you.

Using Webdesign Toolbox is super simple to find the right web tools and services, just browse the website.

5. TestingBot

Trusted by some of the most innovative companies in the world (Microsoft, Disney, FOX, Grammarly, and many others), and with over 8 year’s experience in this market, TestingBot is a super solution that you can use for automated and manual testing.

It supports cross browser testing, live testing, real device testing, and tons of other things.

Start a free trial and see TestingBot in action.

6. Codester

Codester is a huge marketplace where designers and developers will find tens of thousands of premium PHP scripts, websites templates, apps, plugins, and much more.

Always check the flash sale section where hugely discounted items are being sold.

7. Taskade

Taskade is a super technologically advanced remote workspace (works from anywhere where there’s an internet connection) that you and your team can use for chatting, organizing, and getting things done.

You can build a workspace from scratch using the included editor, use a ready-made templates, or edit the one you want.

This collaboration platform is free to use for 10 projects.

8. Bonsai Invoice Templates

Bonsai is a the best suite of software for freelancers, being the top choice of tens of thousands of freelancers from all over the world.

They help you with everything you need, and they even provide invoice templates for freelance professionals – designer, developer, writer, marketer, contractor, consultant, photographer, etc.

9. Mobirise

Mobirise is the most powerful offline website builder in 2020, being loaded with 3500+ awesome website templates, with sliders, galleries, forms, popups, icons, and even more.

Use it to create a unique website, no coding or design skills needed.

10. Goodie

Goodie was created by a team of experts that have super experience in the web development world.

This service is used mostly by web designers that need a reliable web development partner, and by customers that need to amplify their online presence.

11. MailMunch

MailMunch helps you create eye-catching forms and landing pages in seconds – no coding or design skills required!

It is quick to set up, easy to learn, and packs a punch with built-in email marketing features and integrations with any email marketing service of your choice.

Boost conversions by up to 400% with this complete lead generation software.

12. Email Template Builder

You want to let your website visitors create awesome emails and pages directly on your website? With Unlayer it is possible and it is super simple to implement this feature on your website.

This plug and play email editor and page builder can be embedded it in 5 minutes on your website.

13. Rank Math SEO

Every WordPress website needs a powerful SEO plugin to take care of it. There is a huge difference between these plugins, some being extremely efficient.

One such efficient SEO plugin is Rank Math. This free WordPress plugin will make your website rank higher and get more traffic from your existing content.

Get it now, after a basic configuration the plugin runs autonomously.

14. Schema Pro

Schema markups will make your website rank higher and get more traffic. To quickly add them, use Schema Pro. You press 1 button, and you select all the pages on which you want the schema markups to be added. It is so simple.

15. Landingi

Landingi is a brilliant landing page builder that will help you create awesome designs with no experience, no coding skills and no design ideas.

Create a landing page that converts and which is engaging, with Landingi is a simple task for everybody.

16. CollectiveRay

CollectiveRay is specialized in providing super in-depth tutorials and articles for WordPress, hosting, themes, tools, and all kind of platforms.

You should always browse it whenever you are looking for detailed and accurate information about all kinds of stuff.

17. ContentSnare

ContentSnare is the smart way to collect content. Why is that? Because it is an automated service that will help you quickly gather content from your customers and partners, without losing time on this aspect of your business.

Configure it in a few minutes and right after ContentSnare will be on autopilot, collecting materials in your place.

18. XStore – The King-Size WooCommerce Theme

XSTORE is the most complete WooCommerce theme that you can get in 2020. It has included over 90 shop designs, and it also includes several plugins that are worth $407.

Get it now and build a high converting store.

19. FixRunner

FixRunner is your personal WordPress support team that will take care of your website 24/7.

They offer several services:

One-time fix – As the name says, they will fix a problem that you encounter on your WordPress website.
Several packages for WordPress support and maintenance
Speed optimization service
Custom development
Malware removal
Site upgrade
White label for agencies

Let the experts help you with everything you need so your WordPress website can get the best conversion rates.

20. Heroic Table of Contents Plugin

Heroic Table of Contents is the easiest way to add a table of contents to your WordPress website.

Are you using tables of contents? Everybody loves them, in articles and on websites.

Get your website to the next level with Heroic Table Of Contents, it’s free.

21. WrapPixel

WrapPixel is a popular name in the React templates world. They offer high-quality themes that look awesome and which are lightning fast.

Browse WrapPixel and pick what you need for your projects.

22. Pixpa

Pixpa is a professional website builder that people use to create all-in-one websites: a store, a blog, and a client gallery.

The editor is filled with tons of designs and elements, and it is super simple to use.

23. Astra

Astra is the fastest growing theme of all time, having almost 1 million users.

Why does everybody love Astra? Because it has pixel-perfect included designs, it is fast, SEO optimized, it is simple to use and configure, and it is optimized for conversions.

24. uKit

Meet a very affordable and convenient website builder uKit. It allows you to quickly kickstart your online presence. Prices start from 2.5 USD/month, you get a stable hosting, unlimited storage space, and a free technical domain. Lots of colorful up-to-date templates, responsive technical support, and the ability to connect your external domain. You can try it for free on a 14-day trial – no credit card required.

25. Fotor Online Photo Editor

Fotor is an online photo editor that is used by tens of thousands of web designers, online entrepreneurs, marketers, and people that have an online presence. Creating graphics and pictures that are engaging and converting is simple with Fotor, no need to have any design skills.

The interface will guide you every moment.

You can use Fotor also as a background remover.

26. stepFORM

stepFORM is a first-class freemium service for building forms, quizzes, and various online surveys. The whole process becomes seamless and takes a few minutes because due to the visual intuitive interface no programming skills are needed. With stepFORM, you can add a calc to your website, enable online payments, manage your orders with built-in CRM, and more. Try it out today! Free!

27. Opinion Stage Facebook Quiz

OpinionStage is a brilliant quiz maker that you can use with zero experience and zero design skills to create high-engaging quizzes.

Use the included editor and the beautiful elements to start designing your own content.

28. SuperbWebsiteBuilders.com

SuperbWebsiteBuilders.com focuses on reviewing and comparing website builders that refer to various business niches and make it possible to cover a broad spectrum of web design tasks. This information will be of great help to users looking for a professional web building platform to adhere to their needs. The resource also contains ratings and examples of websites created with popular website builders.

29. pCloudy

pCloudy is the right service to use for mobile app testing from anywhere and anytime. It has over 100k happy users and it is used by top companies like Philips, Honeywell and Jio.

Start a free trial to see pCloudy in action.

30. Bonsai Contract Templates

Bonsai is offering contract templates that will help you save time and look like a huge corporation.

You will find tons of templates to choose from, you will have the possibility to e-sign the contracts, and use automated reminders. It is super simple to use Bonsai for generating the right contracts for your projects.

31. uSocial

uSocial is an elegant, lightweight social media icon design tool. Don’t waste time on manual assembling of icons or ordering them from freelancers – now you can design them yourself with uSocial. Make them float, follow the user as they scroll, or simply make them bigger and/or styled in the theme of your website.

32. Controlio

Controlio will help you monitor your employees’ PC activity from anywhere, being the first choice of both small companies and enterprises.

Improve your company security and productivity by using this technologically-advanced software.

Start a free 14-day trial to see Controlio in action.

33. Wix2WP.Pro

Wix2WP.Pro is the all-in-one website migration platform that makes it possible to successfully transfer Wix-powered websites to WordPress. The service is a perfect solution for newbies as well as for web design pros, who lack time to handle the migration process independently. They employ qualified pros, who are ready to tackle all the special nuances of the website transfer procedure with precise attention to details.

34. WhatFontIs

WhatFontIs is the best font finder that you can use in 2020 to identify fonts for free, from any picture and from any website (or email).

This is the only software that has a huge database (over 620k indexed fonts) and which can identify both free and paid fonts, including Google Fonts.

Identify fonts like pros with WhatFontIs.

35. FoxMetrics

FoxMetrics is a super smart cloud-based web analytics platform that empowers businesses to collect, enrich, transform, and explore their mobile, web, and offline customer journey data.

It is much better than everything else.

36. Creative Tim

Creative Tim creates some of the best React, Vuejs, Angular themes, UI Kits, and elements.

They offer both free and paid stuff, take a look on what they offer. Once you use a Creative Tim product, you never go elsewhere.

37. SiteBuilders.PRO

When it comes to moving your website from one website builder or CMS to another, hiring the best SiteBuilders.Pro specialists will surely be an advantage. The platform has rich experience in transferring websites between popular web design systems. What they offer is text and graphic content transfer, web store data import, manual design replication along with SEO, web design and copywriting services.

38. uCalc

uCalc is a real catch for those who don’t want to splash out on a developer or web designer to build a calculator or form for their website. The service provides you a library of attractive thematic templates and basic elements that you can add, delete, modify, and duplicate. Plus, you can connect the form/calculator with CRM systems. Try it out for yourself!

39. UPQODE

UPQODE is an eCommerce development agency based in the US. The company offers cost-effective services for all types of businesses. They use Shopify, WordPress and Woocommerce platforms to design user-friendly websites.

In addition to this, the agency offers digital marketing services. These include Google Ads setup, social media advertising, conversion optimization, online store optimization and eCommerce SEO solutions.

UPQODE comprises a team of experts who offer support services for eCommerce platforms with complex functionalities.

40. IP Geolocation API

Abstract is an online tool that will help you get the location of any IP with a word-class API serving city, region, country and lat/long data.

There are over 10,000 developers using Abstrat’s APIs because:

It is easy to implement and maintain
It has speed and it can scale
This tool has reliable uptime and great support

41. Moderated group chat for live Q&A and Web Events

RumbleTalk will help you add a moderated chat on your website for free, in no time. The platform is filled with tons of features that you will love.

42. WordPressToWix.PRO

WordPressToWix.PRO focuses on ensuring easy, convenient and fast website transfer from WordPress to Wix. The platform also offers quality project promotion and preservation of search engine positions upon the completion of the task. The team of proficient web designers will gladly assist you with all the steps of the procedure, ensuring a top notch result.

43. uCoz

Get your online presence started with uCoz – a time-tested website builder that already powers millions of websites worldwide. It gives you the complete control over the code, and yet simplicity of the visual editor and a solid pre-built base. It offers you full creative freedom. Create the website of your dreams now, and for free with uCoz!

44. HTMLtoWordPress.PRO

When it comes to reliable, safe and professional HTML to WordPress website migration, it makes sense to contact HTMLtoWordPress.PRO experts. This is a team of professionals, who possess niche-specific knowledge and can boast years of expertise. This guarantees a safe and quick result that matches up to client requirements.

45. Blabber

Downloading the Blabber WordPress theme, you get an all-inclusive pack of tools and designs apt for the launch of a blog, online magazine, newspaper, or any other content-rich online resource. This is an ever-growing WordPress theme. It features a collection of 20+ homepage demos, which a new design added to the collection every week. The theme is fully based on the Elementor page builder and features full compatibility with a variety of WordPress plugins. It’s easy to set up the Blabber theme even if you are not a design or coding expert. The theme offers a rich selection of ready-to-go page sand layout styles, which you may adjust according to your specific demands.

46. FC United

If you are looking for a ready-made WordPress theme that can become a rock-solid foundation for your sports-related website, then FC United will handle this job perfectly well. The theme is ready to be used for the launch of football and soccer clubs, as well as basketball and NFL web projects. The multi-functional layout of the theme includes all tools and features that you may need for the launch of a professional sports website. This includes match reports, league tables, team and player profiles with stats, outstanding galleries and shortcodes, and more. Whenever it’s needed, the theme can be enhanced with the eCommerce features owing to its full compatibility with WooCommerce.

47. Craftis

If you are looking forward to launching handcraft services and goods websites, then Craftis WordPress theme will perfectly suit for this purpose. This is a multi-functional ready-made design featuring a collection of 10+ homepage demos under the hood. The theme is compatible with the Elementor page builder, which lets you apply all the necessary changes to the pre-built page in the intuitive visual mode. The theme also features a selection of ready-made pages that are suited for many different purposes. Using the Craftis theme, you may start selling online without any difficulties. The theme is also compatible with the Elegro Crypto Payment plugin that is perfectly suited for the launch of web stores.

Conclusion

There are lots of super-efficient and easy to use tools in this article. Make a schedule starting with today and start testing them.

Many times, simple solutions like this ai logo maker can make wonders for your website. Take your time to see these solutions in action.

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