Articles

Looking to save big and make your web design job easier at the same?

This carefully picked list includes top-tier quality items that have already been used by hundreds of thousands of people like you.

From WordPress themes, plugins, web apps, website builders, and illustrations, this list has everything for everyone.

Check all these 10 excellent deals for designers below:

1. Amelia

Amelia is a WordPress booking plugin that saves businesses time and money from the beginning by replacing their manual or semi-automated appointment and event booking operations with a fully automated one.

Amelia is easy to set up and use. Fitness centers, consulting organizations, training institutions, beauty salons and spas, photographers, medical centers, and other businesses that rely heavily on client and customer appointment or event bookings will profit from using it.

  • Clients can go online to make appointments 24/7, change or cancel appointments, and make payments. They can also purchase tickets for events and add special requirements.
  • Amelia automatically sends notifications, reminders, and follow-ups by SMS, WhatsApp, and email (reducing no-shows while keeping clients aware of upcoming special sessions or events).
  • Amelia also manages group appointments, packages of appointments, employees’ schedules, special days, and days offs.
  • All the above can be managed at one or multiple locations from a single dashboard.

Amelia integrates with Google Calendar, Google Meet, Zoom, and Outlook Calendar. Click on the banner to learn more about what this amazing application could do for your business.

2. wpDataTables

Creating an informative table or chart for your website can be pretty labor-intensive.

  • You may have to work with and organize copious amounts of data.
  • You need to avoid compromising your website’s design at the expense of getting the tables or charts you want.
  • Your tables and charts may need to be responsive, editable, informative, and readable.

wpDataTables plugin does all the above for you and more. It is packed with powerful table and chart-building features that include –

  • 4 chart-building engines: Google Charts, Chart.js, Apex Charts, and Highcharts
  • The ability to accept data from multiple database sources and in numerous standard formats
  • The ability to highlight critical data, or color code data using Conditional Formatting
  • A wealth of powerful data filtering and sorting features
  • Live data from Google spreadsheets or JSON API

wpDataTables integrates seamlessly with Avada, Divi, Elementor, Gutenberg, and WPBakery. Click on the banner to learn even more about this popular WordPress plugin.

3. Trafft

To automate a booking operation, you might need one tool to book appointments, one to accept payments, another to manage employee schedules, and so on. Of course, if your business provides services at multiple locations, then you would multiply the number of tools times the number of locations, and you’ll be good to go.

Or, you could go with Trafft, a single tool with which you can manage all of the above, at multiple locations, all from a single platform.

  • Clients can book appointments online 24/7.
  • They can make payments online using PayPal, Stripe, Mollie, or Authorize .net.
  • Trafft sends reminders and notifications automatically via email or SMS.
  • Trafft integrates smoothly with Google Calendar, Google Meet, Outlook, and Zoom.

Click on the banner to learn about all of Trafft’s booking capabilities. You’ll be impressed.

4. WordLift

WordLift helps your website speak the language of Google. This way, your content will be discovered by users, giving you more organic traffic and helping your business website achieve excellent rankings.

  • WordLift uses AI to transform unstructured content into structured data that search engines can understand.
  • WordLift creates a knowledge graph, automates SEO tasks, and analyzes search intent.

Other features include automatic schema markup, content recommendation widgets, WooCommerce, and Image SEO, all designed to improve user engagement.

5. Total WordPress Theme

Three words summarize Total: flexible, easy, and complete. This aptly named WordPress theme is WooCommerce compatible and has everything you need to create one-of-a-kind sites.

  • Total puts excellent selections of demos, templates, and postcards at your fingertips.
  • The popular Slider Revolution plugin is included, as is Total’s flexible drag-and-drop page builder.

The 50% Black Friday discount is automatically applied when you order.

6. TheGem – Creative Multi-Purpose & WooCommerce Theme

TheGem – the versatile WordPress website builder – offers unlimited customizations, plenty of design & marketing focused features, an extended library of pre-built designs, and the fastest loading times: 

  • You have ready access to a rich selection of 400+ pre-built websites in outstanding design quality 
  • It enables you to build every part of your website right away in Elementor or WPBakery: headers & footers, WooCommerce pages, blogs, mega menus, popups, and much more.
  • You’ll love the 5-star user support, just as have 60,000 others.

TheGem can be yours at a 40% Black Friday discount.

7. Mobirise Website Builder Software

The best offline website builder for 2022 is free to use. That is in itself a great bargain. Mobirise’s team has sweetened the pot by offering a 33% Black Friday discount for their All-in-One Kit with its 175 premium themes and extensions.

  • Mobirise is strictly drag-and-drop and features huge selections of blocks, templates, icons, and images.
  • Your site is yours to host anywhere you want

More than 2 million sites have already been created using Mobirise.

8. Embed Instagram Feed

Instagram offers a terrific way to promote your business’s products or services. Its focus on visual communication makes it an extremely effective marketing tool.

  • It takes but three simple steps to embed Instagram into your website.
  • A variety of display options are available.
  • Your feed will be fully responsive and compatible with mobile devices.

An Instagram feed is yours at a 33% Black Friday discount.

9. Getillustrations Web and App Illustrations Bundle

 

Getillustrations is loaded with trendy illustrations you can pick and choose from, download once, and use forever.

  • Selecting one or more of the 13,000 different illustrations in over 100 categories can definitely add spice to your web designs.
  • Illustrations come in PNG, SVG, Ai, Figma, and Sketch formats and Getillustrations adds new ones every week.

Use the EliteDesigners25 code to get your 25% Black Friday discount.

10. Rey Theme

Rey is an innovative WooCommerce theme that is loaded with WooCommerce-friendly features and is easy to set up and use.

  • Key WooCommerce features include filtering, search, templating, and navigation.
  • Rey’s smart search helps site visitors find exactly what they want
  • Quickview and Ajax search is also available

Headers are customized for eCommerce, and visitors will appreciate Rey’s helpful cart, wish list, and checkout features.

Black Friday is not far off. Before you know it, many producers of WordPress themes, tools, and services will be offering tempting discounts.

Even if you come across a deal that appeals to you, it doesn’t hurt to look around to see if you can find a better one.

Keep in mind that the quality of a product or service is more important than its reduced price. It’s always best to pick and choose carefully. So, we’ve put together this list of the best Black Friday deals for 2022 to help you do just that.

 

[- This is a sponsored post on behalf of BAW media -]

Source

The post They’Re Live! 10 Great Black Friday 2022 Deals for Designers and Agencies first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Color and depth are key themes this month as we look at what design trends are happening across websites. Red is the primary color of choice, and you can see it almost everywhere; the new thing is that it’s being used in backgrounds and as more than an accent color. Additionally, 3D elements and depth of field are making significant impressions.

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

1. Red Backgrounds

Red is the color of power, passion, and attention, but until recently, it wasn’t the go-to choice for website backgrounds. Now trending is red as a background color.

These designs are bold and in-your-face with bright color, an almost brash feel in some cases, and a lot of impact.

But it works.

In the projects below, red is a powerful tool to help convey the message of the website design. The color demands that you engage with the design to see what’s happening and the content therein, and in the case of Pentel, it’s part of the brand color.

Arze uses a bold red background with a smaller inset of contrasting color to show items on the site. It’s an interesting and quite bold choice. The red background carries through the scroll as well. This is a use of color that verges on off-putting but still gets the point across and helps show products thanks to a lot of contrast.

Russia Invaded Ukraine is a perfect use of red as a color that invokes feelings of passion with content to explain the conflict. Red can be a charged color; here, that’s precisely the intent.

Pentel uses a red background that’s a little softer than the previous examples. Here, red is a brand color, and they use the background to help draw attention to items and elements on the site. The red carries below the scroll as well to keep the theme moving.

 

 

2. 3D Icons and Graphics

Three-dimensional elements seem to keep ebbing and flowing with designers. We see a lot of 3D in projects, and then it seems to vanish again. It’s like we haven’t really figured out how to use it well or in a way that works with the content of various designs.

Admittedly, 3D icons, graphics, and illustrations can be difficult to create and use. Often they look a bit light and don’t go with all kinds of content. Therefore, they don’t get used that often.

Each of these projects takes a different approach:
Admilk goes all in with a series of 3D animations featuring the brand name. They are fun, light, and a bit unexpected. The graphics include objects that look like balloons, milk and cereal, and grass with flowers. (Click through to see each one.)

Refokus uses three-dimensional objects that move on a scroll to create directional flow and visual interest in a space where there’s not much else in terms of art. The objects stick with the aesthetic on the scroll and create an interesting element that carries you through the design without overwhelming you with tricks.

Junni is one of those website designs that goes all in with 3D. This illustrated bubble style of graphics is beginning to be a 3D trend in itself as a style that’s being used more and more with icons and even emojis. It has a light feel, and the animation almost makes it seem silly and somewhat childish.

 

 

3. Long Focal Depth

It’s been a while since a true photography or videography trend made this roundup, but there are so many instance of this image/video style in projects it can’t be ignored. Long focal depth is almost everywhere, from travel sites to architecture to e-commerce.

Long focal depth or depth of field allows the image to show a lot of space in an image in a way that’s sharp and viewable. Depth of field, in photography terms, is the distance between the closest and farthest objects in an image that are acceptably sharp.

In this trend, each website features a strong image with plenty of depth of field. The image can be still or moving, and the image is the thing that really draws you into the design.

What’s great about this trend is that you can see a lot of a scene and even feel like you are part of it. It’s an engaging visual concept that can work for a variety of purposes.

Interest Media uses a video reel that slowly zooms even further out. The image is lovely, and with the text overlay is easy to read and understand. It almost feels like you are walking backward on the bridge in the video.

Bloomingdales uses an immersive video with plenty of depth and virtual reality elements to create an immersive shopping experience. It makes you feel like you are in the store via the website and encourages shopping. It’s a fun way for the retailer to showcase its 150th anniversary.

 

Arredamento Design uses a photo with a wide focal area to provide interior design inspiration. Note the crisp lines and ease of which you find yourself engaging with the image, or even imagining a room like the one pictured. The effect used in the design, with a zoom on scroll, pulls the user into the image even more. Depth here keeps the motion and zoom from being too much and almost allows you to see more and feel even closer to objects that are further away in the image.

 

 

Conclusion

There are two trends here that tend to cross over into one another: The color red is everywhere and having a major emergence this fall as a dominant hue and depth, and three-dimensional focus is everywhere.

Both are highly usable design elements that can be incorporated easily, making them even more likely to continue to gain prominence in projects.

Source

The post 3 Essential Design Trends, November 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

We write this guide to the best new tools for designers and developers each month. For October, we’ve sought out tools to make you a better website builder, some handy utilities to make you more productive, and a spooky font for the end of the month. Enjoy!

Microsoft Designer

Microsoft Designer is a brand-new app for creating images from text prompts. You can create social media posts, blog images, and any other assets you need with its step-by-step guided process.

Remix

Remix is a full-stack web framework for React that lets you focus on designing your UI. Remix is geared towards web standards and delivers a resilient user experience so you can build better sites.

Ultra

Ultra is a super-fast package manager that uses hardlinks to install packages. It’s up to ten times faster than NPM and Yarn, and the project is open-source.

AskEdith

AskEdith is an AI-powered app that translates English into SQL so you can query your database without writing custom SQL. Just type a description of what you want to know, and the app creates the query for you.

Wide Angle Analytics

Wide Angle Analytics is a GDPR-compliant Google Analytics alternative that puts privacy first. Track actions across multiple sites and discover insights about your site without exposing yourself to privacy violations.

story.to.design

Imagine being able to import a whole webpage straight into Figma. You can, with story.to.design, a fantastic app that imports code into Figma for updating UI elements or speeding up redesigns.

Metlo

Metlo is a testing platform for securing APIs. By running comprehensive tests against your API, you can uncover issues like unidentified endpoints, before they become a security threat.

StockAI

Nothing is more frustrating than searching for the right stock image when one doesn’t exist. StockAI is a day-saver that searches for stock images, and if the sought-after image doesn’t exist, it will generate one for you.

Growthfyi

If ad-blockers are playing havoc with your Google Analytics, check out this script from Growthfyi. It’s an invaluable service that doubles the speed of GA while ensuring ad-blockers don’t catch it.

Sourcery

Sourcery is an excellent tool for developers that continually reviews your code and suggests improvements automatically. Write better code, and catch errors before it goes to review.

Cyber Security Icons

This set of Cyber Security Icons contains 20 illustration-style icons. In addition, there are some great interpretations of complex ideas like retina scans, crypto vaults, and end-to-end encryption.

Blinqo

Blinqo is a handy little Chrome extension for anyone that needs to share their screen. It allows you to blur parts of your screen when sharing or recording, so your private details remain private.

Instaprice

Instaprice is a helpful new service that shows you what other freelancers charge for the job you’re quoting on. Earn the actual market rates and never get caught out undercharging again!

Leta

Leta is a great app that allows you to design your own keyboard layout. You can redesign the key positions for macOS, Linux, or Windows and download them for free.

Blogic

Build blogs powered by the Notion API with Blogic, a no-code blog builder that can create fast, SEO-friendly blogs in under a minute. Custom domains and third-party scripts are supported.

Digital Maker Toolkit

The Digital Maker Toolkit is a collection of resources for anyone releasing digital products. It includes guides on process, a handy step-by-step checklist, a list of further resources, and a guide to the available tools.

Slides

Slides is a static website generator you can use to create beautiful, animated websites in minutes. Select layouts from a collection of templates and publish with clean code that downloads fast.

AXplorer

AXplorer is a privacy-focused browser with a built-in VPN. Created by the Axia blockchain network, it generates free crypto in the form of AXIA coins when using it to browse the web.

Font Engine

Can’t decide on a font for your latest side project? Font Engine is a handy little app that will suggest fonts for you. Just tell it your brand values and hit the ‘Suggest’ button.

Deliciozo

Deliciozo is an excellent display font with irregular strokes and styling, making it feel like a paper cut-out. It’s perfect for magazines, cookbooks, and even logos.

Kayino

If you’re looking for a font to convey the hippy era, look no further than the psychedelic stylings of Kayino, a groovy display font with crazy details.

Noganas

Noganas is a spooktacular font for the upcoming Halloween festivities. Use it to add some gruesome frivolity to your seasonal designs.

Source

The post Exciting New Tools for Designers, October 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

A design portfolio is an excellent way to demonstrate your skills as a freelancer. As a web designer, you compete with millions of other web designers. Therefore, you must have a strong portfolio to land a high-paying web designing job in such a competitive space. A strong portfolio sets you apart from others. Having no clients, however, can make it challenging to get your portfolio noticed and build up any momentum.

People typically build portfolios from projects they do for clients. Hence, it seems unlikely for a new web designer without clients to have a strong portfolio. However, it’s attainable. You can build a design portfolio with no clients, and you’ll find out how in this post.

What Makes A Good Design Portfolio?

A good portfolio should display your best work, as most clients want to see your best. However, your best work may not be client work. In addition, what’s more, important than displaying your best work is showing your versatility.

Being a versatile web designer will land you more jobs than being an expert in just one type of web design. Notably, you don’t need to have many clients to be versatile in web design. Instead, you become versatile by taking on different projects.

A good design portfolio should include professional recommendations. Testimonials from previous clients are valuable here, but anyone can recommend you. It could be a web designer friend, collaborator, or even your tutor.

Furthermore, a good portfolio should feature non-client work; even if you have thousands of past clients, featuring personal projects is still ideal. It shows your growth as a web designer isn’t limited to what clients ask you to do.

Many other factors constitute a good portfolio, but these points are the most important regarding showing your skill. You can build a portfolio that includes them even if you have no clients.

How To Build A Design Portfolio With Zero Clients

You can try all or some of these methods to build a design portfolio if you have no clients.

1. Take On Design Challenges

A simple way to build a strong web design portfolio is by competing in challenges. It’s helpful whether you have clients or not.

Winning a design challenge is like finishing at the top of the class. It demonstrates that you’re the best web designer in the room and the type of web designer clients want to hire. Generally, taking on design challenges will help sharpen your skills.

You can partake in competitions arranged by renowned web design communities. You can find such competitions on websites like 99designs and Design Crowd. More often than not, winning a web design challenge will land you a job.

2. Carry Out Personal Projects

Carrying out personal projects is similar to competing in challenges. However, in this case, you’re challenging yourself.

Have you ever had a unique idea for a website? Don’t wait until a client asks you to build such a website. Instead, you can begin the project on your own. Then, if you succeed, you can proudly display the project in your portfolio.

When you get clients, you wouldn’t need to convince them that you can handle such tasks; the personal project is a testament to it.

You can carry out as many personal projects as you envisage, no matter how simple or complex. Furthermore, you don’t always have to complete them. Even failed personal projects can be part of your portfolio.

3. Clone Websites

When most clients contact you, they’ll want you to create a website similar to some existing website. You can give yourself a head start by cloning some popular websites and featuring the projects in a portfolio.

Your ability to build a replica of a professional website from scratch shows expertise. In addition, you most likely won’t get a 100% match with the original version. Your version may have improvements that subsequent clients would appreciate.

Furthermore, some website designers specialize in cloning. Suppose you plan to provide such services to clients. In that case, displaying your previously cloned website projects is all you need to create a strong portfolio.

4. Create Websites for Family and Friends

Your family and friends are potential clients. Hence, you can offer to build websites for them, even if it is for free. Afterward, you should include the work in your portfolio.

If your friend or relative has an offline business, for example, you could offer to build a website to give them an online presence.

Even if they eventually don’t use the website, you can include it as a demo project in your portfolio.

5. Get Inspiration From Others

You’re not the only web designer with no clients who wants to build a strong portfolio. Therefore, you can draw inspiration from others.

Dribbble, the social networking platform for designers, is among the best options you have. Dribbble allows you to find thousands of new and veteran web designers with varying portfolios.

You can scan the portfolios, examine the content, and try to replicate what you can in yours. Furthermore, you can even build a portfolio directly on Dribbble.

Bottom Line

Not having clients shouldn’t discourage you as a new web designer. You can still build a strong design portfolio with the methods discussed in this article.

After creating your portfolio, you can then use it to secure jobs. Subsequently, you can update the portfolio with your best client work.

 

Featured image by storyset on Freepik.

Source

The post How To Build A Design Portfolio With Zero Clients first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Each month we publish this roundup of the best new fonts for designers to help you find new ways of packing personality into your designs.

In October’s edition, you’ll find a number of revivals and a ton of vintage inspiration, all wrapped up with a modern twist. After years of geometric sans-serifs, a few decorative flourishes are more than welcome. Enjoy!

The Future

The Future and its accompanying monospace The Future Mono is a homage to the classic Futura. The Future is a great revision of classic forms, and The Future Mono is a blend of Western Modernism and Japanese typographic styles.

Rapidissima

Rapida and Rapidissima began as part of a master’s course at the Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag. While Rapida is a careful, usable serif with lots of thoughtful details, Rapidissima is a visually exciting exploration of speed.

Aiglon

Aiglon is a pseudo-geometrics sans-serif with beautiful proportions. It draws inspiration from 20th-century architectural lettering. It’s a tremendous alternative to Gotham for those looking for a more European aesthetic.

Raskal Oner Write

Raskal Oner Write is a script font for designers that don’t want a script font. All of the classic feel of handwritten letters is here, but the construction is entirely original. Contextual alternatives combine to create the visual look of lettering.

Grostino

Grostino is an elegant display typeface. The enormous contrast in width between its rounded glyphs and its square glyphs adds enormous personality. It’s ideal for branding projects that need to evoke classicism.

Figtree

Figtree is a highly usable sans-serif packed with practical features, including fractions, monospaced numbers, and scientific inferiors. It’s both minimal and friendly, making it an ideal choice for corporate design systems. It’s free to download.

Gills & Co

Gills & Co is a modern serif that draws inspiration from Art Nouveau to create beautiful finials and ligatures. It works really well as a logotype and for packaging.

Catalog

Catalog is a sturdy, easy-to-use serif with thick slab serifs. It has a simplified shape and is easily readable on lower-resolution screens. It features an unusual lowercase g, which adds visual interest to passages of text.

Kreol Display

Kreol Display is a didone typeface with some interesting details that raise it above similar designs. The lowercase ‘a’ and the uppercase ‘R’ are particularly pleasing.

Gwen

Gwen is a typeface family that includes a highly characteristic display face and a more subtle text face. There are seven different weights, and it is available as a variable font.

Benogi

Benogi is a display font run through with wave-like forms. The ’70s aesthetic is continued in the proportion of the glyphs. It’s a great option for health and beauty product branding.

Marcin Antique

Marcin Antique is inspired by early French grotesque typefaces. It has just been reissued with new widths, additional weights, and redrawn italics, making it an even more usable sans-serif.

VVDS The Dickens Tale

It’s horrifying to say it, but yes, the holiday season is just weeks away. If you’re preparing marketing material with a heritage feel, then check out The Dickens Tale, it’s as classic as candy canes and Peanuts reruns.

Povetarac Sans

Povetarac Sans is a workhorse of a sans-serif that performs well as both display and running text. Inspired by vintage designs, it comes with six weights and supports fractions.

Blothe

Blothe is a fabulously chunky display face that is drawn wide, thick, and rounded. Use it at huge sizes to make the most of its weighty presence.

Source

The post 15 Best New Fonts, October 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

The design world fluctuates back and forth, swerving between love and hate for different design trends. Sometimes we see a wide range of approaches, and sometimes designers all hop on the same idea.

This month, the web is dominated by animation. Designers are cramming in motion in unexpected ways. And it’s fun to explore. Here are 20 of the best new sites on the web this month. Enjoy!

Bannach

Bannach is a German furniture brand. Its products are colorful and geometric, so it makes sense that when you scroll down to the collection, the thumbnails begin as pixel blocks and animate into product photography.

Fornasetti Profumi

Fornasetti Profumi takes a different approach to motion. It uses video to emphasize stillness to promote the calming qualities of its candle products.

The Other Side of Truth

The Other Side of Truth is a superb exercise in utilizing the web for a cause. It presents facts on the Russia-Ukraine war, but the standout feature is the toggle switch that, instead of light mode-dark mode, toggles facts and Russian state propaganda.

Glasfurd & Walker

Glasfurd & Walker is a portfolio site for a design agency. So far, so standard. However, it sets itself apart because it’s slightly bigger than the browser and swerves left and right with your mouse movement.

Sirup 5th Anniversary

Sirup is a Japanese singer-songwriter, and to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his first hit single, his record company has put together this awesome maximalist micro-site that uses type, motion, and art direction to capture his style.

Fitzjohn’s

Fitzjohn’s is a slick site for a new apartment complex in the Hampstead area of London. It uses a refreshing modern color palette and calming animation to take the edge off the frankly ludicrous price tag.

Persepolis Reimagined

Persepolis Reimagined is an awe-inspiring WebGL tour through one of the most important cities in ancient Iran. Make sure you tour it on a large screen. It’s hard not to be wide-eyed with wonder.

JaM Cellars

JaM Cellars is a Californian wine brand that’s pitching to bachelorette parties. With names like Butter, and Sugar, it’s not the most sophisticated tipple, but yellow, we love a yellow site.

Danielle Levitt

This portfolio site for film director and photographer Danielle Levitt features samples of her best work scrolling past the viewport. There’s a clever switch of thumbnail and background color when you scroll down to the contact details.

Propel

From total color energy to Apple-levels of minimalism: Propel is a slick, animate-on-scroll site for a marine motor brand selling an outboard and inboard motor. The animated masks on the images are a nice subtle touch.

Standards

Standards is a site for a SaaS that helps organizations create, maintain, and share brand guidelines. It uses subtle animation, video of its UI, and compelling copy to sell its approach.

Chris Carruthers

The portfolio site for Chris Carruthers is deliberately self-indulgent with scrolling text, clipped images, and scroll-jacking, but it’s also delightful to peruse.

Theodore Ellison Designs

We don’t often see colored glass in real life, but the play of light on stained glass is beautiful. This site for Theodore Ellison Designs uses video to bring the effect to the web.

Owomaniya!

The Owomaniya report for 2022 uncovers the state of gender diversity in the Indian entertainment industry. Presented in the style of infographics, the information is brought to life by animation.

Meetings

Meetings is a French events company. Its site uses an animated collage approach to showcase its services, and animated text to pull you into its content.

Blakeney

Blakeney invests in African companies on behalf of institutional investors. Its site is typical of the financial industry, but it uses animation to lift it to a higher level of interest.

Becklyn

Becklyn is a digital design agency. Its portfolio site uses animated text, expanding image masks, and video to guide us through its site and app design approach.

Cabi

Cabi is a brand of Japanese condiments with a typically Japanese feeling site. Bright colors, a slowly scrolling slideshow of dishes, and editorial to pack shot hover effects are a great introduction to the brand.

Slantis

Slantis provides building information modeling to architecture and infrastructure providers. Its site uses animation to showcase the types of content it produces for clients.

July Fund

July Fund is a venture capital project. It takes an entirely different approach than its competitors by adopting a chaotic but enjoyable card-based design.

Source

The post 20 Best New Websites, October 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

User Experience is a crucial consideration for any web developer or designer; the only way to ensure that you’re delivering a successful website is to ensure that the end-user or customer will feel comfortable using it. 

A strong user experience increases your client’s chances of successful audience engagement and conversions.

What you might not realize, however, is that the strategies you use to enhance UX as a web developer or designer can also influence how the search engines respond to a website. 

Though many designers assume that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the work of a copywriter or content producer, there are design elements to consider too. 

After all, the definition of optimization is “the action of making the best version of a resource.”

So, how are UX and SEO connected?

Adding UX to a Successful SEO Strategy

SEO used to be easy. To stand out on the search results, you just needed to stuff a page full of as many keywords and phrases as possible. Now, it’s a little more complicated. 

Leaders in search engine development, like Google and Bing, know that they need to offer their customers excellent experiences to keep them. In this new experience-focused landscape, SEO and UX share common goals. 

Search engines don’t just want to provide customers with any answers to their questions. Instead, Google and its competitors are using everything from artificial intelligence to machine learning algorithms to ensure that search results are accurate, relevant, and engaging. 

In the same way, user experience is about providing users with easy access to the information and resources they want. 

Now that SEO is a multi-disciplined approach, UX is just one of the essential tools that makes it possible for developers to optimize their websites properly. 

Where UX Developers Influence SEO 

There are plenty of connections between UX and site indexability

We all know that since 2018, site speed has become a crucial ranking factor for companies in search of better search results. As a developer, it’s up to you to ensure that there aren’t too many elements weighing a website down that would prevent it from delivering fast results. 

Bounce rate is another critical factor in search engine ranking algorithms. When customers click on a website, Google wants to see that they get the answers they want. If your navigation is difficult to understand, or the correct information isn’t easy to see on a page, end-users will just hit the back button. 

Let’s take a closer look at how developers can influence SEO with their UX strategies. 

1. Site Navigation and Ease of Use

It’s no secret that today’s digital consumers crave easy-to-use sites.

A complex website with pages ranking for different terms might seem like an excellent idea for SEO. However, from a UX perspective, the easier it is to navigate your website, the more your end-users will benefit. 

According to a study from Ahrefs, well-optimized pages that rank for several keywords can be more beneficial than dozens of pages ranking for similar terms. At the same time, if the search engines have difficulty crawling all your pages due to a poor site navigation strategy, then some pages won’t get indexed. 

So, how do you improve navigation and SEO at once? Follow the proper structure for your site first, categories and subcategories on the retail page help customers find exactly what they need. A solid internal linking structure allows the crawlers to examine your website and index each essential page individually.

Keep navigation simple when designing a website for both UX and SEO potential. 

2. User-Friendly Page Layouts

There are countless cases where poor layout design and formatting disrupts SEO potential. For example, cluttering a page with too much information makes it tougher to read and index. At the same time, if your pages aren’t attractive and easy to navigate, customers are more likely to hit the back button. 

If customers come to a website and immediately leave it again, this tells the search engines that they’re not finding what they need on those pages. That means Google will bump you to a lower position on the SERPs. 

So, how do you make your layouts more UX and SEO-friendly?

  • Get your category pages right: Say you’re creating a blog page for your client. They want to list all of their blogs on one main page while linking to separate locations for each article. A design that puts a large chunk of content from each blog on the main page can be problematic for UX and SEO. It means your customers have to scroll further to find what they need. At the same time, the search engines never know which words to rank that main page for. On the other hand, listing blogs on smaller cards, as Fabrik does in this example, makes sorting through content easier. 
  • Leverage headers and tags: Your customers and the search engines habitually “scan” your pages. When trying to improve UX and SEO simultaneously, you must ensure that it’s easy to find crucial information quickly. Header 1 or H1 tags can help by showing your audience your website’s critical sections. Title tags also give search engines more information on the term you want to rank for. Organizing your content into a structure that draws the eye down the page also means your customers are more likely to stay on your website for longer. That shows the search engines that you have quality, relevant content. 
  • Make the most of images and videos: Visual media isn’t just an excellent way to engage your audience. With videos and pictures, you can convey more vital information in a quick and convenient format. This leads to greater satisfaction from your audience from a UX perspective. However, visual content is also great for SEO. You can optimize every image with alt text and meta descriptions. That means you have a higher chance of ranking both in the main search results and the image searches on Google. 

3. Using Search Data to Inform Site Architecture

Today, SEO is less about building hundreds of landing pages for individual queries. Now, it’s more important to take a simple, de-cluttered approach with your website. SEO can determine what kind of architecture you need to create for a successful website. 

For instance, say you wanted to rank for eCommerce SEO. There are tons of related words that connect to that primary search term. Rather than making dozens of different pages that try to rank for distinct phrases, you can cover a lot of other ideas at once with a larger, more detailed piece of content. 

If a topic is too big to cover everything on a single page, then you might decide to create something called “pillar” content out of your main terms. This involves using one main page where you discuss all of the topics you will cover. Then, you design several smaller sub-pages that link back to that central pillar. 

Once again, this helps the search engines to navigate your website and index your pages while assisting the customers in finding the correct information. At the same time, you combine more pages on a website and remove anything that might be detracting from your site’s authority or not offering enough value. 

4. Improving Website SERP Listings

It’s easy to forget as a developer that a customer’s first experience with a website won’t always happen on that site’s homepage. Usually, when your customers are looking for solutions to a problem, they’ll find your website on the search engine results instead. 

This means that you need to ensure that you make the right impression here:

There are a few ways that developers can ensure the search engine listings they create for their clients are up to scratch. For instance, a reasonable title tag for each page that includes appropriate keywords is excellent for SEO and UX. A title tag lets your customers know they’re in the right place and helps them find the information they need. 

Remember, around eight out of ten users on search engines say that they’ll click a title if it’s compelling. 

Another component you have control over as a developer or designer is the “rich snippet.” Rich snippets are the informative chunks of content that Google adds to a search listing to help it stand out. You can use rich snippet plugins on a website to tell Google what kind of extra information you want to include on a page. 

For instance, you might want a company’s ratings to show up on your search results, so customers can see how trustworthy they are:

5. Local Business Rankings

When you’re creating a website for a company, it’s easy to forget about local rankings. We see the digital world as a way of reaching countless people worldwide. Local orders are easier to overlook when you have a global scope to work with. 

However, as a developer, you can boost a company’s chances of attracting the right local audience and boosting its credibility. For instance, you can start by ensuring that the correct directory information appears on your client’s website and social media profiles.

Another option is to create dedicated location pages for each area the company serves. This will make it easier for clients to find the contact details they need for their specific location. 

At the same time, pages that have been carefully optimized to rank for specific locations will earn more attention, specifically from search engines. The more of the search engine landscape your client can cover, the more chances they have to attract new customers and leads. 

Combing SEO and UX

In a world where experience is crucial for every business, it’s no wonder that UX and SEO are blending more closely together. There are a lot of areas where SEO and UX work in harmony together if you know where to find them. Improving your client’s SEO ranking with UX doesn’t just mean ensuring that their pages load quickly anymore. 

Simple strategies, like making sure a call-to-action button is clickable on a mobile page, can simultaneously boost a website’s UX potential and SEO performance. At the same time, adding images and alt text to a website provides search engines with more information while adding context to your content. 

The key to success is understanding how SEO and UX work together. If you look at SEO and UX as part of the same comprehensive strategy to give end-users a better online experience, achieving the right design goals is much easier. 

Of course, just like any strategy, it’s also worth making sure that you take the time to track the results of your UX and SEO campaigns. Examine which systems help you, and examine customers from an SEO perspective with design and development strategies.

 

Features image by gstudioimagen on Freepik

Source

The post 5 Ways That UX Developers Influence SEO  first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot