This article was originally published at Coder Society, and we’ll explore GraphQL’s core features, how to interact with a GraphQL API, and some development and operational challenges.
Nowadays, REST seems to be the default approach for building APIs, typically based on the familiar HTTP protocol. While REST is relatively simple to work with and enjoys widespread popularity, its use of multiple endpoints to address resources sometimes gets in the way of flexibility.
Sass – the extended arm of CSS; the power factor that brings elegance to your code.
With Sass, it is all about variables, nesting, mixins, functions, partials, imports, inheritance, and control directives. Sass makes your code more maintainable and reusable.
And now, I will show you how to make your code more structured and organized.
The organization of files and folders is crucial when projects expand. Modularizing the directory is necessary as the file structure increases significantly. This means structuring is in order. Here is a way to do it.
There are a few different structures you can use. I prefer using two structures — a simple one and a more complex one. Let’s have a look.
The simple structure is convenient for a small project like a single web page. For that purpose, you need to create a very minimal structure. Here is an example:
Another example of the same simple structure is the following:
This is the one I usually use for smaller projects. And when it comes to making a decision of what kind of structure to be used, the size of the project is often the deciding factor.
Why Use This Structure?
There are several advantages why you should use this organisational structure. First of all, the CSS files cache and in doing so, the need to download a new file for every new page visit is decreased. In this way, the HTTP requests decrease as well.
Secondly, this structure is much easier to maintain since there is only one file.
Thirdly, the CSS files can be compressed and thus decrease their size. For a better outcome, it is recommended to use Sass/Less and then do concatenation and minification of the files.
In case files become disorganized, you would need to expand the structure. In such a case, you can add a folder for the components and break it further into individual files. If the project broadens and there is a need for restructuring the whole Sass structure, consider the next, more complex pattern.
The name of this structure comes from 7 folders, 1 file. This structure is used by many, as it is considered to be a good basis for projects of larger sizes. All you need to do is organize the partials in 7 different folders, and one single file (app.sass) should sit at the root level handling the imports. Here is an example:
sass/
|
|- abstracts/
| |- _mixins // Sass Mixins Folder
| |- _variables.scss // Sass Variables
|
|- core/
| |- _reset.scss // Reset
| |- _typography.scss // Typography Rules
|
|- components/
| |- _buttons.scss // Buttons
| |- _carousel.scss // Carousel
| |- _slider.scss // Slider
|
|- layout/
| |- _navigation.scss // Navigation
| |- _header.scss // Header
| |- _footer.scss // Footer
| |- _sidebar.scss // Sidebar
| |- _grid.scss // Grid
|
|- pages/
| |- _home.scss // Home styles
| |- _about.scss // About styles
|
|- sections/ (or blocks/)
| |- _hero.scss // Hero section
| |- _cta.scss // CTA section
|
|- vendors/ (if needed)
| |- _bootstrap.scss // Bootstrap
|
- app.scss // Main Sass fileIn the Abstract partial, there is a file with all the variables, mixins, and similar components.
The Core partial contains files like typography, resets, and boilerplate code, used across the whole website. Once you write this code, there is no further overwriting.
The Components partial contains styles for all components that are to be created for one website, including buttons, carousels, tabs, modals, and the like.
The Layout partial has all styles necessary for the layout of the site, i.e., header, footer.
The Pages partial contains the styles for every individual page. Almost every page needs to have specific styles that are to be used only for that particular page.
For every section to be reusable and the sass code to be easily accessible, there is the Section/Blocks partial. Also, it is important to have this partial so that you don’t need to search whether particular code is in the home.sass or about.sass files in the Pages partial.
It is a good idea to put each section in a separate .sass file. Thus, if you have two different hero sections, put the code in the same file to know that there you can find the code for the two sections. And if you follow this pattern, you will have the majority of files in this folder.
The Vendors partial is intended for bootstrap frameworks so, if you use one in your project, create this partial.
I recommend you use app.sass as the main folder. Here is how it should look:
// Abstract files
@import "abscracts/all"; // Vendor Files
@import "vendor/bootstrap.scss"; // Core files
@import "core/all"; // Components
@import "components/all"; // Layout
@import "layout/all"; // Sections
@import "sections/all"; // Pages
@import "pages/all";Instead of having a lot of imports in the file, create an all.sass file in every folder. Each all.sass file should contain all the imports for that folder — and to make it more visible and understandable, create a main file.
Organisation
The biggest benefit of this structure is organisation.You always know where to check if you need to change something specific. For example, if you want to change the spacing on a Section/Block you go directly to the Sections/Blocks folder. That way, you don’t need to search in the folder to find the class in a file.
Facilitation
When the code is structured, the processes are promptly facilitated. They are streamlined and every segment of the code has their own place.
Organizing code is essential for developers and together with all other skills, it is the most effective way to improve the functioning of the site. And even though there are multiple ways of organisation and different strategies, opting for simplicity helps you avoid the dangerous pitfalls. And finally, there is no right or wrong choice since everything depends on the developer’s work strategies.
Featured image via Reshot.
It’s that time again: the self-fulfilling prophecy that is the Pantone Color of the Year has been announced for 2021.
For 2021, we’re getting two colors of the year. The colors selected to grace museum gift shops, and end-of-year blog posts are Ultimate Gray (a mid-range gray somewhere around #939597) and Illuminating (a citrus yellow that’s approximately #F5DF4D).
A marriage of color conveying a message of strength and hopefulness that is both enduring and uplifting.
The last time Pantone selected two colors was Rose Quartz & Serenity in 2016, and we all know what a tranquil, serene year that was; so 2021 will presumably unleash the curse of an ancient mummy on the world, or see us collide with the Sun.
2020’s color, “Classic Blue”, probably wasn’t much of a color of the year unless it happens to be the color you painted your home office. If the company had genuine foresight, it might have opted for the blandest beige it could find — in fact in the Summer paint brand Dulux almost opted for that for 2021, naming “Brave Ground” its color for next year, but for beige’s “resilient” qualities rather than any lockdown boredom.
Perhaps that’s why Pantone’s PR department opted for two colors in 2021: a nondescript grey to keep us going until we’re all vaccinated, and a wildly luminous yellow for the latter part of the year.
In fairness to Pantone, its color choices aren’t predictions as is often reported, rather aspirations. Pantone believes the pairing “expresses a message of positivity supported by fortitude” which may be just what the world needs right now.
A combination of colors is much more sensible than a single color, with so much about color dependent on context. But the actual color treatment of 2021 is much more likely to be multi-color gradients.
You can try out Pantone’s colors for 2021 on Instagram, or on Pantone Connect.
By the end of the year, the number of global smartphone users is expected to reach 3.5 billion. That’s a significant 9.3% increase over the last 12 months.
In a world where everyone is constantly connected to their mobile devices, it makes sense that web developers and designers would need to consider new rules for how they create engaging experiences. After all, most of us find browsing from our smartphones to be much more convenient than sitting down at a laptop each day.
With a little luck, you’re already taking steps to mobile optimize your website but standards are changing all the time. To make sure your website is up to scratch, here’s your guide to prioritizing your site for mobile, ready for the new year.
The first step in updating your web design and development principles, is understanding the concept of mobile first design, and how it’s changed.
With a responsive website, you create something that adjusts to the screen size of any device; with a mobile-first site, you’re focusing first-and-foremost on the user experience that people get when they’re on mobile, taking that as your starting point, and building from there. Instead of building your website for the desktop and using mobile as an afterthought, you start with a consideration of mobile.
Even Google is highlighting the demand for this process lately, with the mobile-first indexing algorithm. If you can’t design for mobile-first, then you could risk your clients being unable to rise up the search engine ranks.
So, how do you get started?
Web developers and designers are nothing without a great toolkit.
The good news is that there are solutions out there that can help you to master the right skills for a mobile-focused user experience. For instance, Skeleton is excellent for small-scale projects that require fluid grids and minimal compiling.
Alternatively, Bootstrap can offer a one-size-fits-all solution for the front-end development for mobile devices. There’s a default grid system available, plenty of components, and JavaScript plugins to work with.
With the right tools, you can minimize and prioritize the content that’s most valuable for your website projects. This is crucial for maximizing website speed and creating clarity when it comes to content and imagery.
For instance, check out the ESPN website; it’s split into very easy-to-follow categories of content that are perfect for scrolling on a smartphone. The grid of videos makes it feel like you’re using a tool like YouTube.
Once you have the right tools to assist you, it’s time to begin building your mobile-first website from the ground up. Rather than jumping straight into considerations of the latest design trends, it’s important to start with the foundations.
For instance, navigation within a mobile page is usually hidden under a hamburger button. However, you can take this concept to the next level too. For example, the Shojin mobile website only demonstrates the most important website options within the navigation bar to avoid overwhelming users.
The key here is to keep things as simple as possible, without restricting what your audience can do when they visit your website. Although you want to keep the number of interactive elements on your site small, you also need to ensure that those elements are easy to find and use.
All buttons and CTAs should be clear and tappable. Fonts need to be large enough to read from any screen, and your navigation system needs to be 100% simple, without slowing anything down.
On average, we recommend making all clickable elements at least 48 pixels in height.
Images are a crucial part of any website. They add context and appeal to your design. However, they can also seriously slow down your website if you’re not careful.
Remember, different devices have different demands when it comes to imagery. A desktop page may need a 1200px wide image, while a mobile-only needs the image to be 400px wide at most. The old way of making your images work was to load a large resolution image and use the same file on every platform. Unfortunately, this slows downloading time significantly.
Instead, it’s better to have at least two different versions of the same image for your mobile and desktop solutions. You can also consider SVG.
SVGs are incredibly scalable – more so than bitmaps. With SVG, you can ensure any icon or graphic continues to look sharp and clickable across all devices. Because these files are often smaller, your site loads quicker too! Hubspot is great at using SVGs.
Intricate illustrations are a massive component of HubSpot’s brand. If those images were saved as PNGs or other alternative files, then they would take forever to load. Because they’re all SVGs, you can enjoy the same consistent experience across desktop and mobile.
It’s not just the big graphics and images that make a huge difference to your website when it comes to mobile-first design. You also need to think about the legibility and clarity of your website across all devices and platforms. If people can’t read the value proposition of the company that you’re designing for, you’re going to have a major problem.
Focus on making your content as easy to read as possible. Look into the typefaces that seem most appealing on a range of devices.
Remember to balance the body and heading font sizes for the device size too. You’ll need to ensure that the experience feels consistent and smooth as your users scroll through each page. Just take a look at the mobile version of the IMPACT website, for instance.
The headings aren’t as huge as they are on the desktop version of the website, and they’re displayed below, rather than above the featured image. However, this helps to give a more immediately eye-catching and structured experience to mobile users.
There’s even a handy “Search Engine Optimization” tag included, that users can click on if they want to find more related articles.
When it comes to typography, remember that it’s not just size and clarity that matter, but how things are structured throughout your website too. Your type should naturally guide your visitors along the page.
Finally, on smartphones, you can accomplish a range of amazing things that you might not be able to do when using a desktop device. Your users can make calls, open apps, send messages, and more, all from within their mobile browser. They can also move their smartphone around a room, taking advantage of concepts like AR and VR.
Taking advantage of the unique capabilities that smartphone design can offer gives you a chance to get unique with your user experience.
Making the most of the mobile experience can be much simpler than you’d think. For instance, on a desktop site, you could list your phone number on a contact page. On a mobile site, the number can begin a call when clicked. You can also take the same approach with email addresses, and social media icons too.
Depending on how experimental you feel, there’s also plenty of opportunities to go above and beyond with your mobile features. You may decide to create a mobile app version of a website that your customers can download onto their phones.
Alternatively, you can look into things like AR technology. This could allow your users to practice placing items of furniture that they may be thinking of buying from an online retailer into their house, so they can see how well they work with their other interior design choices.
Ultimately, having a responsive website that works on both mobile and desktop devices is mandatory in the modern world. However, going above and beyond with mobile-first design is a great way to get ahead of the game.
If you can focus on building a website that puts the experiences of mobile users first, then you can create something that’s much more likely to grab audience attention and deliver amazing experiences.
If nothing else, showing your clients that you have what it takes to design for mobile is an excellent way to ensure that you can gain as many new project opportunities as possible.
The end of the year tends to be busy for a variety of reasons and it can limit some of the freshness we see in designs during much of the year. Regardless, there are a few trending design elements.
What we are seeing right now is rooted in deep simplicity with a focus on the message.
Here’s what’s trending in design this month…
Websites with a focus on societal issues have moved to the forefront. While the look and design techniques used for these websites can vary greatly, there’s a common theme of activism, community engagement, and support.
What’s great about this movement – and what it reflects – is that people can take to the digital space to help amplify their message or find support with people who are going through the same things they are.
While some of these efforts are backed by people and brands you may know, that’s not always the case.
The designs also work best when they reflect the personality of the spokesperson or mood of the issue at hand. Note the vast differences in the three examples.
The I Weigh Community uses bright color with a black and white image of promoter and celebrity Jameela Jamil to bring attention to mental health issues.
Wear the Waste by retailer H&M uses simple typography in a natural environment to set the stage for more eco-friendly clothing options.
Wavering Stripes uses an illustrative approach to bring attention to the stories of immigrants in detention.
Each design is vastly different but all are striking and draw attention to the causes therein. The common thread is that each design is simple enough to draw you in and help you better understand the message and not get lost in tricks or design effects.
’Tis the season for product promotion.
Designers are opting for larger-than-life product images that allow shoppers to see every detail before making a purchase. (Seems like a good plan in a socially-distanced pandemic world.)
It can work in a number of ways:
Pair these visuals with strong descriptive language and you’ve got a winning combination.
The variance in the examples is a good showcase of how to do this well, while not over-doing effects.
The Fitbit Charge 4 website uses an opening image of the device that’s way larger in scale than reality (especially if you are on a large desktop screen). Users control using click and scroll to get more views and details of the device. Zoom and animation aren’t overwhelming, providing a solid look at the product.
The Nest Thermostat opens with a video animation of the device moving into the forefront of the screen. (It’s rather quick.) From there, if you want more detail, there’s a video to watch that provides deeper product information in a digestible manner.
The final example isn’t really a product at all, but rather an art installation. What’s interesting is that it uses these same oversized options to show the art in detail. This is a great way to handle seeing something that you may not be able to experience in person. What makes it work so well is that the angles of the photography mimic how you would view it, looking up toward the piece hanging from the ceiling.
Carrying on the theme of big, bold, and oversized designs, this trend focuses on simple animation for maximum impact.
While all-out cinematic animation can be fun to watch, it can be a little overwhelming at times. This more subtle approach is easier to digest and helps put the focus on the content at hand rather than the effect on the display.
There are plenty of ways to use simple animated effects, including scrolling animations, hover actions, and constantly moving elements. (You can see each of these if you click through the examples.)
The Patrick Mahomes store, 2PM, uses a single line of moving text that tells you what the website is about. It differentiates the retail store website from information about the athlete or his other efforts. White text on a black background is classic and easy to read. The most important thing of note may be the speed of the animation; it’s timed in a way that’s scannable but not dizzying. Sometimes the hardest part of nailing an animation is getting the speed right.
The resume-style website for Naomi Niko is striking and simple, but neat hover effects and a simple scroll animation for her resume only – and not the photo or details on the left side of the screen – make the design intriguing. The almost awkward crop and directional pull of her image also creates interest and makes you want to get further into the design.
Guilbo uses layered hover animation to make it look like he’s blowing a glittery-dust off the screen and at the user. The rugged detail of his face with the sparkle of the animation is a fun contrast. The design uses layering with dots in the foreground and background for an additional depth effect. It’s also especially nice that the objects are made to stay off his face for a realistic effect.
While 2020 has been an interesting year, designers have continued to find new ways to evolve the craft and create visual experiences that are inspiring. These trends are no exception.
It shows that even in unusual circumstances or with odd constraints, that amazing work and creativity can thrive. Stay creative everyone, and keep those new designs – and potential trends – coming!
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.
Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.
As human beings, we like to think that we’re rational creatures.
We tell ourselves that we make our decisions based on fact and logic. However, that’s rarely the full truth. As much as we try to make choices guided by rationality, the truth is that we’re often highly emotional people, driven by the way that things make us feel.
So, what does that mean for a website designer?
Though designing a functional and logical website is important, it’s crucial not to forget about the emotional impact of each interaction that your customer has with the sites that you build.
Sites that don’t elicit any kind of emotional response aren’t just boring; they’re forgettable.
A forgettable website is poison to any website designer’s portfolio.
That’s why we’re going to introduce you to some easy ways to use emotion in your designs this year.
First, you need to understand the part that emotion plays in user decisions.
Don Norman’s book Emotional Design says that there are many things that designers can do to make their designs more emotional. Even something as simple as focusing on the aesthetic impact of your website can make it more likely that you’ll reach your audience on an emotional level.
One important thing to remember about emotional design, is that it’s not just about making your customers feel good. Emotion can be both positive and negative. Sometimes negative emotion is more impactful than positive feelings – it all depends on the kind of site you’re trying to create.
A website selling health products to customers needs to make that audience feel comfortable and confident that they’re buying a trustworthy item. However, it may also need to trigger small feelings of worry or concern in the audience about what might happen if they don’t buy.
Knowing how to walk that balance between positive and negative feelings is how a designer takes a simple website design and turns it into something incredible.
So, where do you get started?
Visual elements are one of the easiest points to get started with when you’re designing for emotion. That’s because visuals are fantastic at drawing out feelings.
An animation can create an emotional connection with your audience by helping them to understand how your product works or making them laugh when they land on your page. A genuine photograph of your team working together can inspire trust and feelings of affinity.
One of the most common visual elements used to trigger emotion is color.
Shades like blue and green in the digital design world are more likely to drive feelings of calmness and comfort. On the other hand, red and yellow often encourage feelings of enthusiasm and happiness.
The way that you use color can make a massive difference to how users feel when they arrive on a website. For instance, the Barclay’s website would have been pretty boring if it was just a basic black and white screen. However, a banking site can’t afford to go over the top with animations or illustrations in most cases, as this can detract from its professional image.
Adding small patches of blue in a way that complements the brand’s color palette is a great way to generate feelings of trust. Combined with the image of a genuine real-life person, and calm tones, the bank instantly presents itself as something approachable and honest.
At the same time, the clear hierarchical layout of the bank’s website, with an easy-to-follow navigation bar, easy-to-read font, and clear headings and buttons comfort the customer. Users get exactly what they expect when they come to a financial website, and that makes users feel as though they’re in the right place.
Visual elements are a great way to embed emotion into digital design. However, they’re just the first step. The emotional aspects of your web design choices should also appear throughout the interactions that customers have with the website.
A good interaction on a website or app needs to be simple and straightforward enough that users feel comfortable taking the next step in their journey. However, it also needs to drive the right emotional response from users too.
For instance, when you sign up for a free account trial from Box.com, you don’t just get a form full of information that you need to fill out.
Next to the form, you also get information about what you’re signing up for, complete with small checks next to each of the free features you’re getting. This helps to put the customer’s mind at ease and remind them that they’re in the right place.
The use of a box, including discount information next to the sign-up form also helps to make the interaction more emotional, by reminding customers that they’re getting something for free.
Every time a customer interacts with a website, there’s another opportunity to engage them on an emotional level. On the Firebox website, when a customer adds something to their cart, there’s a small animation on the cart icon that informs them that something is waiting for them.
When they click through to the checkout, they get instant information, including what they can do to “gift wrap” their item, and buttons showing the various payment options available.
Whenever you’re designing a page for a website, whether it’s the checkout page, a product page, or something else entirely, think about the interaction that the visitor is having at that moment. How can you ensure that each customer feels more comfortable, delighted, informed, or engaged?
Visuals are an excellent way to express emotions.
However, they’re not the only option.
As a designer, you’ll need to think about how you can combine web design with the use of microcopy to connect with customers on a deeper level.
Rather than drawing attention to tedious, dull, or impersonal instructions, notifications, and error messages on a site, how you can you make sure that everything on the website delivers the same emotional impact?
The simple addition of a tiny illustration is enough to provide a much more emotional experience to customers. Compelling micro copy and illustrations on 404 pages can also strengthen the connections that customers have with the sites they visit.
Just look at how Google added a dinosaur game to the page that customers are sent to when they don’t have an internet connection.
The right micro copy and interactions can instantly transform even a negative experience, like not being able to connect to the internet, into something emotionally engaging and positive.
When it comes to making an emotional connection between your customer and their end users, web designers need to remember that often the smallest details can make the biggest differences. Little extra features, like implementing a way for customers to have fun when their internet connections aren’t working, are the things that make websites more memorable from an emotional perspective.
Although emotional impact can be an essential aspect of a fantastic website design, it’s important not to get carried away. Adding too much to a website in the form of little extra graphics and unique interactions could end up weighing down a site and making it slow to load.
Although it’s valuable to think about how every interaction an end-user has with a website will make them feel, it’s important not to overlook the basics of web design when you’re at it. You’ll still need to ensure that the finishing design is easy to use, engaging, and attractive.
Pay attention to the basics of user experience design, and make sure that the extra emotional elements you’re infusing into your sites aren’t going to damage the experience that end-users get.
If you can get the blend right between emotional impact and functionality, then you could create the kind of website that audiences will never forget.
It pays to implement emotion into your design portfolio.
The holidays are fast approaching. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late to get a new website online or to make your existing one look festive for the holiday season.
When it comes to decking the halls of your website with a little festive cheer, how do you do this without spending loads of money and time on it?
You’re in luck. BeTheme has a variety of pre-built websites to help you do just that. Not only that, but you can use these festive websites for a variety of occasions, like:
You could also just use one of these sites to make your website feel more seasonal as the temperatures get colder and the snow starts to fall. (If that’s what your winter wonderland looks like!)
Let’s have a look at 4 ways you can bring a little seasonal or holiday cheer to your visitors with a festive website from BeTheme:
Unless you’re running a business like the Christmas Tree Shops, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have holiday imagery up all year long.
The only problem, though, is that it can be a real pain having to go in, find a new theme, and then redesign your site around it… For only a month or two.
That issue is easily resolved with BeTheme, which comes with over 600 pre-built websites and two page builders — Muffin and Elementor.
Because there are so many pre-built sites available, you can easily switch to a non-festive website once the holiday season is over.
In order to swap out this design with a festive website, you’d first have to reset your theme (which Be provides instructions on how to do). Then, install the new site you want to use.
Like BeXmas:
And if you only want, say, a new hero image in the top of your website, you can cherry-pick which parts of the pre-built site you install.
Let’s be honest, the winter holiday season can feel a little nuts — not just because your business has to keep up with the change of pace, but because your website has to keep in step with what’s going on.
So, let’s say you have an ecommerce site that changes frequently for upcoming sales, holidays, events, and so on. For this, you could use the BeMall pre-built site (all year long, mind you):
As you can see, it currently has a Black Friday message on the homepage. It’s not uncommon to have to transition from Black Friday or Cyber Monday into the December holidays.
Here’s how you might do that:
The update can be as minor or major as you want. So long as you use graphics and content that stay on-brand, you can easily swap out as much of your imagery as you like.
Holidays should be a time to lift spirits. Having a website that’s able to satisfy your customers’ needs during the holiday season will certainly help.
You might also want to think about adding small animations to your design, too.
The animations themselves don’t have to be festive, but you can use them to call attention to holiday-themed content. Take, for instance, BeParty:
You don’t need to have champagne bottles popping or streamers flying across the screen to get your point across.
This animation gives the New Year’s party balloons a gentle and natural feeling of bobbing up and down. An attention to a detail this small is sure to bring a smile to your visitors’ faces.
Holiday celebrations aren’t always big blowouts. Unless your entire business is going all-in on the holidays (or it’s a totally holiday-themed business), there’s no reason your site should have to go all out either.
Sometimes a more understated approach is best.
In that case, you’d keep your normal branded elements, imagery, and content in place on the website. But to make it feel a little more festive, you could infuse your site (at the very least, the homepage) with slight seasonal or festive touches.
For instance, let’s say you’ve built a website for a popular ski resort. Your website might look like the BeSnowpark site does normally:
The main draw of the resort is skiing, so it wouldn’t make much sense to change the graphics. However, you could do something like this:
It’s a small enough change, but the gift emoji and bigger lettering in the green button might inspire loyal snowbirds as well as first-time visitors to more quickly book their much-needed holiday getaway.
There are many science-backed reasons why a festive website is a good idea.
Holiday decorations, in general, stir up positive feelings of nostalgia for many people. They can also help alleviate some of the stress that’s built up over the course of the year:
What’s more, holiday decorations can visually signal to others that you’re friendly and accessible, even if they don’t know you.
Sounds exactly like how you want visitors and prospects to feel, right?
As you can see, there are many ways to decorate your website for the holidays. To do it quickly and affordably — and not completely turn your regular website upside-down — a BeTheme pre-built site is the way to go.
[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of BeTheme –]
2020 has been an interesting year, to say the least. And although I’m sure many of you can’t wait until the calendar flips ahead to 2021, it doesn’t look as though we’re going to be able to say goodbye to 2020 so easily. Many of the changes we’ve had to make this year are now expected to stay with us — a least for the following year.
The latest research gives us some hints about what’s to come.
If you want to start preparing for 2021 now, then these reports and surveys from organizations like 99designs, Upwork, Content Marketing Institute, and McKinsey & Company are a must-read:
I don’t want to make 99designs’s Design Without Borders 2020 report sound like it’s all doom-and-gloom. Because it’s not.
That said, 2020 has been a rough year and it would be irresponsible for me not to acknowledge the challenges that all of us freelancers have encountered this year. This report is one of the few I’ve found that includes data on the major challenges freelancers have dealt with this year, including:
Beyond working more hours and hustling to find new clients all the time, what else can freelancers do to weather a business disruptor like COVID-19? There are a number of things.
For starters, it would be really helpful to have a crisis management plan for your finances. It would also be beneficial to refocus your efforts on finding clients who pay for the value you provide and not for the hours you spend building websites. Clients who see the value in what you do will be less likely to ghost or drop you at the first sign of trouble.
Upwork commissioned Edelman Intelligence to put together its very first Freelance Forward survey. The goal of the ensuing report was to shed light on the state of freelancing, how the pandemic has changed it, and what we can expect in the future as a result.
One of the data sets I think web designers should pay close attention to is this:
According to this survey, freelancers only spend about 52% of their time on billable work.
Now, one of the reasons why entrepreneurs and enterprise companies make so much money is because tasks are relegated to different team members. For instance, if a design agency owner is good at building relationships with prospects, they’re going to spend time on sales calls and managing social media. The day-to-day admin tasks would then get offloaded to virtual assistants and billable project work would go to designers, developers, writers, and so on.
But as a freelancer, you don’t have the ability to delegate and scale when you’re working solo.
Rather than burn yourself out trying to handle all these things yourself, the report suggests there’s something else you can do:
Although freelancers recognize how important soft skills and business skills are, the first data set suggests that not enough attention might be paid to them.
What I suggest is that you take a look at the division of your work hours. If you’re spending less than half of your time on billable work, it might be a good idea to strengthen your non-design skills. That way, things like marketing, contract preparation, and client management won’t consume so much of your time in the future and you can bill more.
Content Marketing Institute’s annual B2B Content Marketing Report is, once again, chock full of useful tidbits about the state of content marketing.
While a lot of the data is focused around marketing organizations and how they’ve pivoted during the pandemic, I thought this bit of info would be really helpful for web designers:
For those of you who design B2B websites, take note of where these companies plan to invest in 2021. If 2020 has been particularly hard on you, or you simply want to expand your horizons, there are some other opportunities worth jumping into:
B2B Marketing Investment => Web Designer Opportunity
Content creation => Blog graphic design, infographic design, and schema markup creation
Website enhancements => Website redesign, website audits
Content distribution => Social media ad design, Google ad design, schema markup creation
Getting to know audiences better => UX research, UX design
Customer experience => Chatbot/live chat development, support portal creation
For those of you who’ve worked for a B2B sales organization before, you know how important in-person interactions are to them. It’s not as though they can just sell their products or services online the way B2C ecommerce companies can. The key to B2B success is through customer (and partner) relationship building.
Prior to 2020, this meant lots of in-person meetings, phone calls, and emails. But something has changed this year, on both sides of the fence.
This chart from McKinsey suggests that digital relationship building and customer service aren’t just a temporary solution for COVID-19. B2B decision-makers are coming around to the idea that this is going to be their “next normal” (as McKinsey refers to it).
These new “go-to-market models” include the following:
As a web designer, you can help your B2B clients level up their efforts to achieve this next normal.
For starters, you can integrate scheduling into their websites. This’ll empower prospects to schedule video meetings (for demos, discovery calls, etc.) with your clients’ sales teams.
Another thing you can do is build out self-service elements like live chat or chatbots, FAQs pages, knowledgebases, and support portals. As consumers become more confident with doing business online, these self-service options will make a world of difference in their experience with brands.
I know, I know. 2020 sucked. But at least we have a good amount of research and experience that gives us a much clearer idea of what we’re getting ourselves into with the coming year. (At least, I hope so.)
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.
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