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Best Wireframe Tools for Web Designers in 2022

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Best Wireframe Tools for Web Designers in 2022

You can consider wireframe tools as the core element of the web designing process. These tools provide an opportunity to the customer and the web developer team to get an idea about the features and the setup of a web design.

The main purpose of drawing a wireframe is to improve your website in terms of aesthetics and style. Using wireframe tools correctly, you can see a bird’s eye view of the web layout. In other words, you can plan how the user will process the information on the website and interact with the interface with wireframe software.

Wireframe tools that make a difference

There are hundreds of free and paid tools you can use available online that can strengthen and improve your website. Here, you can find the best and the most suitable online wireframe tools listed below.

Sketch

Sketch is a fairly simple tool for modern UI and designing. This tool integrates with other design tools and also supports you to create integration plugins.

Sketch offers you vector editing, boolean operations, pixel-level precisions, grinds and layouts, resizing constraints, math operators, variable and OpenType fonts, insert window, reusable components and more. It has every feature in the macOS app and also a web app to make it easy for you to do your best work at every stage of your process.

InVision

InVision is the platform for inclusive collaboration within digital product design and development. With InVision, you can add images and basic shapes and draw the wireframe with your mouse cursor.

InVision is a great tool for teamwork since it’s a cloud app that multiple designers and stakeholders can be signed in and write at the same time. It will work well for designers who want to collaborate with team members on an initial wireframe sketch or comment on more refined wireframes.

Adobe XD

Adobe XD is an all-in-one UI/UX design tool. It stands out as an easy to use option for wireframing and interface design projects. You can do everything from wireframing to basic prototyping with Adobe XD. You can easily use this professional wireframe tool, without spending too much time trying to learn the software.

Adobe XD enables;

  • wireframe,
  • mockup, and
  • prototyping in the same design file,

in this way you don’t have to integrate multiple tools. It has too many features such as vector drawing tools, editing in photoshop, responsive resize, blend modes, content-aware layout, components, 3D transforms and more like these.

Figma

Figma is a web-based design program suitable for use on the web, macOS, Windows, Linux which allows you to work with your teammates at the same time. With Figma, you can easily create and prototype your wireframes and test your designs with your users with just one link.

Moreover, Figma has many features that enable drawing freely with a modern pen tool that automatically merges points, incorporating plugins to speed up your workflow using libraries to store, find, and add new assets.

UXPin

UXPin is another powerful prototyping and wireframing tool available on the web, macOS and Windows. With UXPin, you can do interactive wireframe and prototype work with a built-in library of UI and general design elements. 

With this very powerful and advanced one among wireframe tools, UXPin, you can create polished, shiny, and clear wireframes. The advantage of a higher-fidelity wireframe is to have more fine-tuning of the flow and functionality without spending much time redesigning the screen’s components.

Balsamiq

Wireframe toolsWireframe tools

Balsamiq is a great design tool for developers, designers and creatives. It allows you to add items to your website or application just by drag-and-drop, which helps for rapid prototyping as well as conveying your ideas quickly and without confusion. It includes some pre-embedded time-saving controls commonly used in wireframing.

Balsamiq’s interface focuses on the basics. Its interface and elements imitate a hand-drawn style to emphasize content and structure over other aspects, making it handy for every stage of a build. Balsamiq’s training system, Balsamiq Wireframing Academy, will shorten your learning process and ease and speed up your work.

Mockplus

best tools for wireframe mockplusbest tools for wireframe mockplus

Mockplus is an all in one designing tool for;

  • wireframe,
  • interactive prototyping,
  • unified collaborations and
  • scalable design systems.

With its cloud-based structure, you can also have dozens of integrations.

Mockplus enables you to add notes and documentation to each element in your design and save your style guide. It offers you room for your project area to create and save documentation in a text editor. You can control your review feedback process and make sure everything will go well when you are making wireframes.

Fluid UI

Wireframe tools fluid UIWireframe tools fluid UI

If you are in need of detailed mockups, you can try a high-fidelity wireframing and prototyping tool, Fluid UI. With Fluid UI;

  • create wireframe drawings using Fluid UI’s online editor, which includes almost all current mobile-specific design features,
  • switch between pages by making the design element you want clickable,
  • easily share your work with your team and get their opinions,

Fluid UI has many features to improve your website such as rapid prototyping, built-in libraries, upload existing assets, mouse and touch gestures, add and resolve comments, installable desktop client and more like these. With its advanced features, Fluid UI will help your team flesh out your website efficiently.

Cacoo

Wireframe tools cacooWireframe tools cacoo

Cacoo is a wireframing and diagram tool built for collaboration. You can track changes to review previous versions of your designings and integrate programs and applications like Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, and Adobe Creative Cloud for collaborative work with Cacoo.

There are more than 20 wireframe templates and UI shapes in Cacoo, including the user-friendly drag and drop wireframe tool. By communicating directly in the wireframe with comment and notification features, Cacoo allows real-time editing on the same diagram so your team can work together on wireframes wherever they are.

Lucidchart

Lucidchart is a visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams quick and easy. You can easily create and edit diagrams online and offline. When using it online, you can experience real-time collaboration with changes that are immediately merged and synchronized. 

With Lucidchart, you can quickly build and share wireframes and mockups online. While UX designers will probably require a more sophisticated wireframing tool, Lucidchart is the perfect solution for non-designers. With its ease of use, you can create polished wireframes and mockups by developing web and designing UX.

Conclusion

While wrapping this best wireframe tools guide up, we would like to mention that there is no one fits all solutions for each business in this digital-centric world. So, it will always better to be mindful of your requirements and tech stack before choosing a wireframe tool.

As each business has a different design process, making a decision might take more time than you imagined. If you would like to consider other solutions in the design market, you can have a look at our best web design tools list that covers a vast array of solutions to your unique needs.

 

How to Start a Web Design Agency in 2024?

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So, are you thinking of starting a web design agency? It’s a glorious idea. Covid-19 has shown businesses how successful or disruptive a good online presence can be for businesses. During this pandemic, we have all seen that the demand for web design has increased and will continue to increase.

Today, it’s much more common to start your own business. After learning all the necessary skills about web design such as coding, designing, photoshop, SEO, IT, and more, everything is easier now and only a few steps are left for starting a web design agency.

When you know the steps and have a plan, you can launch your agency successfully. It takes time to rise and succeed in a web design business, so you should manage your expectations and set yourself up for achievement. 

Here are some necessary steps you need to check out to get started to turn your skills successfully into a career, complete the startup process and launch your agency.

Before starting your web design agency

You should know web designing includes tasks that require programming technical skills and knowledge in site usability. These skills, including being familiar with designing tools and knowing coding languages such as HTML and CSS, are essential for any web designer.

However, by choosing the best platforms such as WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, and Drupal, you don’t even have to learn every detail about HTML and CSS. These platforms automatically do everything and make your work easier. Learning these platforms that give you speed is as simple as using them. However, expertise in your field brings you more success in the long turn.

The other thing is finding out what you like most to determine in which fields you want to serve. When you have a focus, your agency can stand out in certain industries easier and faster. It creates great work offering services that you are good at and you love to.

Once you are ready to offer your service to your customers, you can start your web design agency.

Define your agency and your business plan in detail

Take the time to define your agency. Your definition is what your agency represents, as well as how your business is perceived by your customers.

The most effective way to define your agency is to ask your own questions and answer them in detail. These questions should be strategic and intentional. Your defining questions should be like

  • What is our agency’s approach?
  • What is our story?
  • What problems do we solve?
  • Why do you trust our team?

After questioning, you should give striking answers. Your answers also should be as creative, defining, and impressive as your questions. These questions and answers will give reliance to your clients about your agency.

Another indispensable thing is your business plan. You can think of your business plan as a road map of your business. When determining a business plan, there are many things to consider. The important one is to point out the key elements of your business in a way that’s clear to you and your clients.

Your business plan should set long-term goals about new products and services, market and competitive analysis, financial partnerships, business contracts, defining your ideal clients, setting financial goals and targets, and estimating your expected expenses and income. A strong business plan will give you confidence and attract your potential clients to work with you.

When choosing a legal entity, you should consider how taxation rules will affect your finances and your liability and plans for partnering and growth. Make sure you are in full legal compliance when setting up your agency.

If you are new to these topics, you can work with an experienced financial advisor to draw a useful guideline for you. There are various types of companies, which affects the tax you will pay and all the processes you will need to manage while serving your customers.

The most common legal entities are sole proprietorship, partnerships, limited liability company (LLC), S corporation, and C corporation. You should check out which one is best for your agency. You can choose to start a sole proprietorship and change it when you need it in the progress of time.

Before starting your business, open a bank account and get a credit card if necessary. You can consider consulting a financial professional to create your spreadsheet and accounting structure. In addition, it will be helpful to establish a long-term relationship with a tax professional who can handle taxes as well as answer financial questions. Also, you can work with new generation companies providing all these services as a pack.

Decide your services and products

Offering only building a website may not be enough for your agency. Other services are a plus for it to continue running smoothly and finding more customers. You should consider ways to bring extra value to your clients with numerous services and products.

For being useful in many fields, your web design agency can also include other in-demand services such as logo and brand design, photography and videography, networking, advertising, growing an online community, development, search engine optimization, managed hosting, and more.

However, you and your team must be experts and professionals in these services. Your agency should only offer services you know you can deliver professionally. Considering the competition in the field, this will bring you forward while starting a web design agency.

Build your team and invest in hardware and software

A successful web design agency should be well-rounded with people who specialize in many skills. In that way, you need to build a team of experts to cover every aspect of your web design business. They don’t have to all in-house team members. You can collaborate with many partners who specialize in areas that you are offering and are passionate about.

Find the best ones and build the best team for your agency. Look for networking opportunities that connect you with others, including competitors, collaborators, and potential customers. Keep in touch with other freelancers engaged in the web design business like you. Build a known and trusted partner network that works in synchrony with you, offering numerous services.

As a web designer, investing in solid and capable hardware and software is vital. So buy the best computer and peripherals you can afford first, including a large monitor, printer, and scanner. Having the best hardware is critical as software.

First, decide what software you need and consider whether it is more cost-effective to purchase software or use a cloud service by paying a monthly fee. Also, you can get cloud-based software that provides financial monitoring, video meetings, remote login capability and more.

Create your website and online portfolio

As a web design agency, you need to put all your skills and experience to design a website belonging to your agency that shows that you are different and better than other companies. Your website is the first impression for your clients and the first step in convincing them that what you are doing is great.

Your portfolio will help you a lot in demonstrating your skills as a web designer or developer. Your website itself is the best thing you can use to impress potential customers. Nothing tells your story better than your portfolio of completed work. If you don’t have a few completed works to highlight, you can consider building some volunteer sites to strengthen your portfolio. Make sure you have enough social proof to show some of these to your other potential customers on your website.

It doesn’t just end with creating a website and portfolio. Search engine optimization (SEO) is another important part. For your website to rank higher in search engines, you need extensive SEO knowledge. You can get this by choosing the best keyword and adding that word to your website URL. This method will show you how to improve your content based on the keyword you want to rank for.

For example, if your agency is based in London, your potential customers should find you when they search for web design agencies in London.

Find your first clients

Finding first clients is the last step of this process. In the beginning, your SEO work is going to take some time to kick in. Therefore your customers will most likely consist of acquaintances, referrals, and people you connect with on social media and social network.

However, there are some efficient ways to find your clients such as reaching out to your personal network, cold calling and emailing, publishing new content to your website, asking existing or former clients for referrals, scouring job boards for good opportunities.

You shouldn’t be in a rush to find your customers because it will of course take time to be successful at almost every stage of this business. For this reason, you have to be confident and patient throughout the whole process.

Starting a web design agency is a great step in our age and taking the right steps, you can have a revenue generating business.

 

How to Be a Web Developer in 2024

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In today’s day and age, we are all surrounded by technology. Technology is everywhere, from basic applications to ground-breaking inventions such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (MI), Robotics and others. Even the social media sites and search engines we visit and consume content come from technology.

The eCommerce sites that we use for purchasing items and company websites we visit for information require technology. If you are a technocrat or looking to build your website, get on the bandwagon with web development in London; it is on an upward slope.

What is Web Development?

To start with the basics, first, understand what web development is. It is the process of creating websites and applications and includes both – ones curated for open-source use, that is, the Internet, and for private networks – commonly seen in large corporations – that is the Intranet. The advent focuses on the coding and programming of sites that drive functionality and operation.

To further delve into this arena, web development comprises three layers: client-side coding (frontend), server-side coding (backend) and database technology.

The Three Layers of Web Development

Front End Development

Front end development concerns the features directly visible and easily accessible by the end-user. What you experience upon website loadings, such as user-friendliness and aesthetics, are done by front end developers. In simpler words, they incorporate the visual components that go into websites, including buttons, navigation and other aspects.

If frontend development is something that entices you, then HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are paramount. Mastery of these languages is a prerequisite. In addition, you also need to be well-equipped with the know-how about creating responsive designs, testing, and debugging. More so, familiarise yourself with tools such as content management systems, APIs, and frameworks.

Back End Development

Back end development caters to the behind-the-scenes of websites and focuses on server-side logic and integration for web applications. To put it in simpler words, it works on customer-facing products and programs. These developers handle servers, databases, and applications; these are aspects that are unseen to the end-user.

For aspiring backend developers, languages and frameworks such as Java and Ruby on Rails are a must-have. Secondly, getting acquainted with some skills will come in handy. Job providers typically look for knowledge of database management, framework utilization, programming, and security compliance.

Database Technology

Think of database technology as the support system or backbone of web development. It makes for the repository that stores and manages multiple contents such as codes and files paramount to the optimal functionality of websites. Most websites today use some form of Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that enables this trifecta of web development to synchronize seamlessly to create fully functional websites.

For those looking to delve deeper into database technology, the Structured Query Language (SQL) is deemed easiest among the varied options. It is similar to English, which makes it easy to read, write, and comprehend. Also, familiarise yourself with some of the mainstream relational database management systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle DB.

Difference between Web Design and Web Development

Although often used interchangeably, there is a stark difference between web design and web development. Web development caters to the functional aspects of websites such as servers and applications. Web design with the look and feel – or vibe – of the website. That is, web design caters to color schemes, fonts, drop-downs, scrollbars, and touchpoints. If you need further support from an experienced agency, you can check the web design agencies in London.

Now that you are familiar with what web development entails, we now delve into how to go about acquiring these skills. If you have come this far, then you’re probably intrigued to learn about web development, no?

The Learning Curve for Codebreakers

Thanks to the Internet for putting forth a plethora of online courses. These online courses are referred to as Coding Bootcamps. Application and practicality-driven, the learning curve is intense, and you can get job-ready even in twelve weeks.

Further good news is that you need not belong to a tech-related field such as engineering, computer science or software engineering. Even those belonging to diverse areas can develop proficiency in coding and web development. Breaking the traditional bulwark where web developers spurt out through their higher education pursuits from tech-related fields, there are immense opportunities for you to start anytime and anywhere. According to Switchup, several coding boot camps such as Le Wagon and General Assembly help hone your skills and abilities in web development.

According to research published by Brainstation, a growing number of web development professionals start later in their careers. Around 55 per cent of respondents hail from a different field.

The Growth Areas of Tomorrow

More than skill-building, one should look out for relevant skill-building. While already in the market, the phenomenon AI, ML, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and augmented reality (AR) are in the nascent stages. The future holds tremendous growth in these areas, and upcoming web development enthusiasts should get on with pursuing proficiency in languages in these aspects.

The area-specific coding languages are Ruby and Solidity for Blockchain, JavaScript and PHP for IoT, Lisp and Prolog for AI and ML, and JavaScript and Swift for AR. Moreover, Cloud infrastructure is among the growth areas, and HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) is the recommended coding language.

Final Comments

Technology is prevalent and is everywhere, from brand websites to social media platforms to eCommerce websites. Web development creates applications and websites and comprises the three pillars of front end development, back end development, and database technology.

Web development differs from web design in that the former caters to servers and applications and the latter to the visual aspects such as color schemes, fonts, and touchpoints. Learning web development today has become easier than before and can be pursued through coding boot camps. More so, with immense growth potential in blockchain, IoT, AR and others, one should get on the bandwagon with these as well.

App Prototyping: Types, Examples & Usages

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App Prototyping: Types, Examples & Usages


Designers, product managers, developers, and other product creators start their projects with prototyping since websites or mobile apps prototyping has been taken as the best, fastest, and even cheapest way to test app ideas before moving to the next app development process smoothly.

From ideas to lifelike prototypes, there are various types of prototypes that can help you visualize ideas, and fully test the viability and usability.

If you aren’t familiar with prototypes, this article will give you a guide to the 5 main types of prototypes, what their purpose and usage are, and how you can choose them to level up your product. Some extra tips and tricks help you create a better prototype.

What is prototyping?

App prototyping is the process of building a website or mobile app sample that shows off the main structures, user flows, interactions, user interfaces or other details, so you can validate your design draft of the actual product and iterate it to the best version.

All app prototypes work just like a visible or even functional model. They help you better organize all interface elements, test the details, find and resolve all possible issues in advance.

Making prototypes is an important way of collecting feedback from stakeholders and real users to see how usable the website or app and see the effectiveness of solving the initial problem set out by the client or company.

So, app prototyping has become an essential step for designers, developers and product teams to create a better product.

Source: Leverage Edu

5 types of prototyping

When working on an app, UI/UX designers and product teams often use different types of prototypes depending on where they are on the design and development timeline. So we’ve compiled 5 types of prototypes that you can use to help streamline your product design process:

Sketch and diagrams

  • When to use: User and market research stage, the brainstorming stage
  • Usage: Analyze user flows and record all rough ideas

To better understand their audience, most designers and product teams often spend time doing user and market research before starting to design their project. When teams start to analyze use problems, pain points, product needs and competitors solutions, some great ideas may pop up.

When these ideas come up, you can quickly capture them by sketching them out on paper for later reference.

Source: LearnAppMaking

To capture all ideas when they come, remember to sketch anything that pops out in your mind like app user flows when doing some user and marketing research.

At the brainstorming stage, sketching everything directly on paper makes it easy to present ideas clearly, better communicate with others and get a far more creative design draft.

And you don’t have to focus on all interface details at this early prototyping stage.

Paper prototyping

When to use: Initial idea iteration and presentation

Usage: Iterate ideas on your own and convey your rough ideas to others

These are more in-depth than simple sketches. After the brainstorming stage, you want to add in more detail and iterate ideas and some designers opt for paper prototyping to create a tangible app. These are made with paper and pen and can be made quickly to simulate testing their real-life app.

Let’s first look at a paper prototype example:

Source: Behance

In the image above, you can see the paper-made prototypes. These present more detailed interfaces and even showcase simple interactions between pages in the app or website. All you need to do is create every paper interface to demonstrate and showcase the functionality of the app manually.

Low-fidelity prototyping

When to use: Start to create a digital copy and define the macro design direction

Usage: Visualize details of your app, collaborate, test and iterate with your team

After creating and iterating on paper prototypes, you will want to translate those ideas into a digital prototype so that more stakeholders – PMs, developers, clients and other designers can participate in the next stage of the process.

Most teams start with low-fidelity prototypes. Only include basic elements that show off the general layout and interface to avoid wasting time.

Source: Topflight

Low-fidelity prototypes are digital designs with very simple interactions, general user flows, along with basic features and details. Without all these in-depth visuals and details, designers can focus on the core foundation of the app. Low-fi prototypes, similar to sketches, are great tools to gather early user feedback on more general foundational design features.

In the whole product design cycle, wireframes are one of the most typical low-fi prototypes.

Wireframes – present the basic structure of web or mobile apps

A wireframe acts just like a blueprint of a digital product. It showcases the main structures of a website or app, including key pages, page flows, layouts, forms, architectures and more. Wireframes also help keep the focus only on macro interface details, rather than all smaller details.

Source: Blue Flame Thinking

Medium-fidelity prototyping

When to use: Polish UI and visual details

Usage: Test and determine specific UI and visual details

In comparison to wireframes, medium-fidelity prototypes bring a more detailed design structure with more specific design details that can help designers further test their app or website. These are often static designs with a general outline of what the final product may become. Medium-fidelity prototypes are often seen in mockups.

Mockups – present more UI and visual elements like colors

In general, mockups are static wireframes with much more UI detail, including colors, buttons, texts, layouts, images and more. These often look similar to the final product except they lack realistic interactions, animations and transitions.

Let’s look at a fashion website mockup:

Mobile app mockups are often static digital prototypes with more UI and visual details. They help designers further test the visual details with ease.

High-fidelity prototyping

When to use: Determine the final design draft

Usage: Present all possible details, test them out, find and resolve all possible issues

Hi-fi prototyping is the most common type of prototyping seen on websites such as Dribbble or Behance. These allow you to try out your designs and resolve any issues you come across when doing usability testing. To have a good app or website you need good design and good navigation, to ensure you do, making a hi-fi prototype lets you try out how your app works and transitions from page to page.

In comparison to medium-fi prototypes, hi-fi prototypes include all UI visual details. Furthermore, they are interactive, allowing users to implement interactions, animations and transitions to test out a like-like representation of their app. Before being shipped off to development the designer can do user testing on how users interact with the final product before final iterations are completed.

Let’s see how a high-fidelity website prototype works:

How to choose the right type of prototypes?

As we’ve learnt, different types of prototypes have different uses and you should always try to choose the right one based on your needs.

For example, if you are browsing over tons of websites and get inspiration, you can quickly sketch your ideas to capture all of your thoughts in quick succession.

However, when teams work on a project together that needs to go into development, especially one with all of the fine details drawn-out, hi-fi prototypes are the way to go, with the ability to get all the important design details in there along with the added ability to fully test out your app for any usability issues.

All prototypes have their own uses, it’s important to always find the most suitable prototype for what you’re trying to achieve, from mapping out basic ideas to designing full-blown app prototypes.

How to make a prototype?

To make a sketch of your app all you need is a pen and paper. But once you try to make digital apps, using low, medium, or hi-fi app prototypes, you will need a digital prototyping tool like Mockplus.

In this era of digital design, Mockplus helps you and your team turn all of your ideas into lifelike prototypes, helping you go from basic wireframes to realistic prototypes, allowing you to iterate together and test the usability throughout your process.

Mockplus

With Mockplus, you get a huge built-in library of UI components, icons and templates all ready to use so you and your team can get started quickly. The Vector tools help you create your own components, logos and other illustrations with pixel precision. With task management and role-based permission, you can manage your projects and teams in a breeze.

Tips and tricks to make a better prototype

When you create prototypes to test your ideas, don’t forget the below tips:

  • Provide as many details as possible: When testing prototypes, the more details you add to the prototype the better. The earlier your app’s details can be tested reduces the chance that users encounter issues in the future. Details make a huge difference.
  • Make your interface and user flow as simple as possible: No matter what type of website or app you are trying to build, the goal is to attract users (and increase revenue). Nothing should take attention away from that. To get the users attention on your main objective, keep user flows and interactions simple and intuitive for users to be able to find their desired information quickly.
  • Try to create and follow a design system: When working with your team, a unified design system where brand assets are collected helps keep consistency and reduce errors when making a prototype. Reusable images, colors, components, layouts, and more can all be stored in one easy-to-access place, saving you time and effort.
  • Try to test on a real PC and mobile device: To get a real gauge of user scenarios you should test out your prototype on a real PC or mobile device to see how your prototype works in the real world. If there are any issues you can go back and iterate quickly. Mockplus has a mobile mirroring app for both iOS and Android as well as on the web so users can test their prototypes in all situation
  • Keep testing and iterating: Once you finish your final product don’t stop there! Testing and iterating won’t finish even after shipping your product, your team will need to keep on top of users’ evolving needs and adjust to that accordingly. Prototyping lets you quickly test and iterate your updates.

Wrap Up

Prototypes facilitate the design and development process of an app or website. Different types of prototypes bring different benefits to designers and teams.

We hope this article helps you choose the right type of prototypes that help save you time and give you better results.

Top Design Features to Lookout for Your eCommerce Website in 2024

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Your eCommerce store is incomplete till it can find a way to retain and engage visitors. To accomplish this, merchants might want to create an aesthetic and easy-to-navigate eCommerce website. If your online store can ease the buying process, you’ll stand to receive a tremendous increase in revenue.

To achieve this, merchants might want to invest in specific design features to create a flawless interface for visitors. Users must find it easier to locate information. Such features will improve the way users interact with the eCommerce store and give them a memorable experience.

Store owners will be able to turn their average day-to-day visitors into loyal-lifetime users. Listed below are all the eCommerce design features every merchant must try to integrate into their eCommerce store in 2022.

Essential Design Features for eCommerce Websites

  • Search Wizard
  • Carousel Slides
  • Megamenu
  • Newsletter Pop-up
  • Product Comparison
  • Banners
  • Reviews
  • Help Desk

Search Wizard

Not everyone likes to click on a list of links to locate their favorite items. They might want to type it in and get to the product immediately. In this scenario, browsing through the site stalls their desire to purchase. Hence, merchants would need an advanced product finder on their website.

The search wizard will scan, analyze, and display vast volumes of related data in near real-time. Not only that but, it’ll also pull relevant data as soon as the customer starts typing (minimum three characters). The user would also get the option to view all the results for the typed search query.

Although not applicable to every eCommerce business, it is a very effective way to captivate visitors right off of your home page. Merchants can showcase top-selling products and other promotions to capture user attention. This feature is known to be impactful and informative.

Integrating this into your eCommerce store doesn’t take a lot of effort. Plus, it gives merchants a chance to present prominent information as soon as visitors land on the homepage. Present dazzling and persuasive imagery of your SKUs that tempt users to click, visit its product page, and purchase them.

Megamenu

A sophisticated mega menu that neatly lists all your products into different categories and subcategories will be incredibly useful for your users. Visitors will be able to easily browse through the site by merely navigating further in the mega menu. More than anything, it elevates the visitor’s user experience.

Merchants can first segregate all their SKUs and then place them into the categories and subcategories on the mega menu. Users will find it easy to locate the product. Merchants can even use icons and pictures against each label in the mega menu. Do not forget to make it mobile responsive.

Newsletter Pop-up

One of the ways to keep in touch with your loyal customers is through a newsletter. Add a pop-up to the home page that gets triggered after a while. Any visitor to your store must get to see them as a pop-up. The pop-up will collect an email address and forward information on deals, sales, trends, and other interesting data.

Newsletters are the best way to attract customers to your store. Even unregistered customers might convert upon seeing a brilliant deal in the email. Merchants get to engage users with trivia, tips, and general eCommerce news as well. Newsletters are the best way to nurture a relationship with your target audience.

Product Comparison

Now and then, users might feel the need to compare two or more products to decide which suits them best. In this scenario, having a product comparison tool simplifies their dilemma and eases their decision-making process.

Being able to analyze multiple products on various aspects will give users a better understanding of their choices. Users should be able to compare along, color, dimensions, weight, price, and much more depending on the industry. Allow customers to get the best overview of the technical details of various products.

Banners

The use of banners on the home page, especially animated ones, is known to capture visitors’ attention. Feature anything you want, but ensure the content looks as bold, dynamic, and colorful as possible. Stylish and visually appealing banners get high visibility.

Anything included in the banner will not go unnoticed by visitors. This allows merchants to have top-selling products, anything on sale, or even a countdown timer to create urgency. One thing is for sure that users will get tempted to click. As a result, it is quite likely that your order placements will skyrocket.

Reviews

eCommerce store owners can reserve a section on their homepage to display reviews and positive testimonials with ratings. Visitors will immediately feel a sense of faith and see the credibility in associating with you. Therefore, any visitor that comes across this is more likely to place orders on the site. Genuine and honest reviews make the brand seem more trustworthy to the visitors.

Help Desk

Add a floating helpdesk to as many pages of your eCommerce website as possible. Customers use the help desk to submit tickets about their orders. Any issues that emerge during or after placing orders can be explained in the form that pops up after clicking this widget.

Submitting the form will generate a ticket, a unique ticket number is generated, which is then forwarded to the customer via email and a representative in the support team. Merchants can also use the unique number to consolidate every message exchanged about that order.

Wishlist

Allow users to add their favorite products to a wishlist. Furthermore, allow them to share the wishlist with other users on the site and share the same on social media platforms. Wish Lists are a great way to create shopping lists or gift lists. Also, this handy tool can serve as a reminder about future purchases. Users can find the products easily in the future.

Call-to-action (CTA)

Convince your users to take some action on your site by displaying a bright, prominent, and eye-catching CTA on various pages of your eCommerce store. A CTA would involve some form of future contact.

Logically and qualitatively, place as many CTAs as you can throughout the site. Uses shouldn’t have to navigate over to the “Contact Us” page or to a form to get in touch with a pivotal person in your company.

Web Design Fundamentals – How to Smash It With User-Friendly Website?

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Web Design Fundamentals – How to Smash It With User-Friendly Website?


The Internet opens up a world of opportunities for forward-thinking businesses. Online marketing is the way of the future – and the first step to establishing a foothold online is to have a good website.

Nowadays, there is no shortage of ways to get yourself a website. A business could bring a whole IT team on board to take care of the task. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can just use a website builder and make yourself a serviceable website in no time. However, by far the most impressive and cost-effective way to go about it is to hire professional WordPress developers to get the job done.

Regardless of which path a business chooses, the fundamentals of website building are still the same. To be successful, a website needs to be well-thought-out, solidly designed, and most importantly – user-friendly.

This last bit is more important than many businesses realize. Making a site as user-friendly as possible is a must nowadays as the Internet is an attention economy. Studies show that user attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. With this in mind, here are the main components you need to focus on to get the most out of your website.

Ensure Website Stability

To make your presence online felt, your website needs to be up and running at all times. It doesn’t matter how good your website looks and how user-friendly it is if users can’t see it because it is down all the time. This means that it needs to be well developed and optimized to achieve the lowest downtime possible.

Website development is not a straightforward task, even for seasoned professionals. Things “break” all the time. It’s an iterative process that requires a lot of time, effort, and dedication that can achieve astounding results. The first step on that path is to hammer out what the exact parameters of the job are.

What are the goals and objectives for the project? What can actually be accomplished, and in what time frame? What happens if plans change mid-development? All those questions need to be answered if you are to end up with a functioning website. Failing to do so at the very beginning results in instability in the development process. This inevitably causes complications, which in turn result in downtime – which you want to avoid.

The way to deal with potential issues is simple. Get good developers and hammer out the details of the project carefully with them before you start. Be honest and upfront with them as the project goes on and treat the task at hand with the seriousness it deserves

An important factor for website stability is how the website itself is hosted. Nowadays, there are plenty of free hosting services out there that you can use if you’re aiming to go as cheap as possible. However, if you want to avoid server issues, you’d do well to consider spending some money on a hosting service.

Focus on Accessibility

Another crucial aspect that should be bumped to top priority when designing a website is accessibility. This means making sure that your website works well on all platforms and on all browsers.

For many companies, getting a website that’s really good-looking on desktop devices comes first. The goal of it being accessible on mobile, or through less popular browsers, is often something of an afterthought. This way of doing things is counterproductive in the extreme in today’s online environment, for a few reasons.

Firstly, a staggering amount of searches, and therefore – traffic – actually comes from mobile devices. Users stumbling onto your website on their mobile devices are the norm, rather than the exception. You need to make your website as appealing to them as possible.

What’s more, as of mid-2021, Google has made mobile-friendliness a ranking factor for searches. This means that making sure a website is optimized for mobile users is not only crucial for user experience, but for SEO as well.

This is why companies who want to do well online should focus on making their websites as accessible as possible from day one.

Design for Navigability

Making sure your website is stable and accessible should be your first priority when planning it out. Taking care that it is designed to be as easy to navigate should be your second order of business.

True, there are many aspects of website design that need attention, and at the end of the day, you need to cover all bases. Still, as the cornerstone of a good user interface, navigability is probably the most important. Luckily, achieving it is not that difficult, if you put your mind to it and stick to what works.

Use the color palette on your website to emphasize certain elements on each page. There is no hard and fast rule as to what colors you need to use and where to put them. Using bold colors and contrast on certain elements of your design creates a clear visual hierarchy. Incorporate striking design to emphasize the elements that a user would find most useful.

Make sure everything on your website is clearly labeled. Every detail on every page should be marked out and be immediately recognizable at a glance. Achieving this effect without making your design too intrusive or aggressive may prove to be a bit of a challenge, but it is by no means impossible.

Make sure you incorporate a working Search function into your design. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the focus of user attention at all times, but it should be easy enough to find. This is just one of many tried and true methods of dramatically improving the UX on your website.

Design the structure of your primary navigation with simplicity in mind. Put it near the top of your page, and make it straightforward to use. Don’t cram all the navigation options into it, as that will make it clunky, not to mention unaesthetic. Remember, although you want to establish a clear visual hierarchy, you don’t want your website to be too “top-heavy.”

Incorporate a secondary system of navigation in the footer of your site, or in another section. Any other part of the site the user may want to visit should never be more than two to three clicks away from their current view.

Finally, limit the use of lead-generating strategies on your website. Landing pages, pop-ups, and live chat can work wonders for converting clicks into sales. Still, bear in mind that if you overdo it, this strategy will backfire. Aggressive pop-ups, in particular, are an instant turnoff for many users. This is why you need to find a balance, and include just the right amount of them when you’re designing your website.

11 Web Design Trends to Power Up Your Website in 2024

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Website composition patterns are continually evolving. Simultaneously, there are some mainstream styles that just will not disappear – like the pervasive moderation and vivid level delineations that we’ve been seeing for quite a while.

1. Dark mode

Dark mode, which was at that point a major pattern in 2020 on account of OLED screens, will turn out to be significantly more famous one year from now.

It looks simple, nice and elegant at the present day. Telegram, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Apple are only a couple of examples of the large brands that offer elective topics on their foundation. If you are interested in more design solutions, check the iPhone mockup collection.

2. Human touch

Hand-drawn design elements bring emotion and humanity to websites, something that deep down users who are tired of technology crave.

In fact, this rebellious trend is almost the opposite of pixel-perfect, so flaunt your ragged edges and exposed shapes to show how human and realistic your brand is.

3. Immersive 3D elements

Volumetric graphics have always fascinated people; it’s a trend that’s only been held back by technology and cost. Until virtual reality becomes more pervasive and cost-effective, hyper-realistic 3D imagery, which often spans the entire screen, is the best way to create an immersive experience on your site.

Thanks to advances in web technology and the constant refinement of their games, web designers are increasingly using 3D elements as VR/AR technologies gain momentum and add beauty and impact to 3D elements.

4. Delicate shadows, layers and drifting components.

Delicate shadows and drifting components make a pseudo-3D impact and make plans more layered and fascinating.

This pattern expects to make profundity. It works with the image, yet additionally with text and photographs, and gives the plan a feeling of daintiness, as though the components were coasting on top of one another.

5. Mixing Photography with Graphics

Using real photographs mixed with illustrations or graphics really captures the spirit of the brand. The style of these visuals can influence how people interpret the photo – cartoon swirls are better used for something more playful, and geometric swirls for something more complex. High-quality photos already look great on their own, but adding cool graphics will really show off your creative flair.

6. Solid frames in a single colour space

Layouts with a full crop release have long been a trend in web design.

Designers are now gravitating towards solid structures and playing around with different ways of using lots of white space (and space of any colour, for that matter) to give their designs more structure and use clean framing, in order to give the design a sense of stability and solidity, order and neatness.

7. Light and neon

Futuristic full colours like blue, purple and bright pink give the design a sense of radiance for the future. Professionals use bold colour combinations to make web design literally jump off the screen. This trend is particularly evident in duochrome web design.

It blends perfectly with other uptrends like extreme minimalism and dark mode. And luminous colours can really shine.

8. Ultra minimalistic navigation

Website content gravitates towards more voice-scripted video and less text. Over the past few years, navigation has become easier to adapt to very small devices and even less attention span. Extremely minimalist navigation removes much of the difficulty in usability.

9. Frosted glass effect

Recent advances in web technology have made it easy to implement a frosted glass effect on websites. The blurred appearance of elements behind the frosted glass overlay helps add colour to the area, as well as allowing text or objects to appear in the image and remain legible.

10. Photo art

The main idea is to dazzle customers and grab their attention by showing interesting and unrealistic elements. They make potential consumers use their imagination and stay on your website longer. In this way, you can increase your average session time and possibly increase your conversion rate.

11. Realistic textures

After years of ethereal gradients and smooth isometric objects, textures are making a comeback. You can get users to reach out and touch textures by creating outlines and grains. However, try not to overdo it. You may end up diverting visitors’ attention to the wrapper rather than your brand.

After all, the major web design trends of 2024 look less like a design from a science-fiction film and more like the real thing we might encounter in everyday life. It shows how increasingly simple websites are becoming part of our lives, and the designers of 2024 are bringing them to life

Skills and Tools You Need for Efficient Web Design

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Skills and Tools You Need for Efficient Web Design


Web design and website design require a specific skill set from the designer. You also need to make sure you have the right tools so you can implement the latest web design trends for 2021 and future years.

In this article, we’ll briefly touch on the skills and tools required for you to become an in-demand website designer that gets paid handsomely for their projects!

What Skills Do I Need for Modern Web Design?

Modern web design means knowing how to work with layer-based composite designs to leverage the impact of parallax animation, a knowledge of skeuomorphism and neumorphism to stay ahead of the curve, a deep appreciation of and familiarity with eye-strain-reduction color schemes, and all the following skills:

  • Knowledge of emerging and popular website design trends
  • Familiarity with design and prototyping best practices
  • An eye for detail
  • An appreciation for modern color schemes, Pantone color of the year, and so on.
  • Experience working on small and large projects
  • Knowledge of design thinking concepts

If you have these requisite skills, you can command a high salary relative to your peers. It also helps to be news-aware so you keep learning about new ways to enhance the user experience with your website designs.

What Tools Do I Need for Efficient Web Design?

Additionally, you need the right tools that offer these capabilities for designing and prototyping your website before it even goes into the development stage. Remember: as a UI and UX designer, you’ll need to know how to create interactive prototypes that are life-like, and you should be familiar with the tools and skills required for efficient web design.

The best tools are usually cloud-based SaaS applications so you can work from anywhere. It’s an important consideration whether your design team members work remotely from home in different parts of the city or across the globe. However, there are some highly collaborative desktop options as well, as you’ll see. Here are some of the best tools for your design software arsenal:

Wondershare Mockitt

Wondershare Mockitt

Mockitt from Wondershare takes advantage of the company’s extensive software development skills in the SaaS space. As such, Mockitt is hosted on the cloud and easy to access on any modern browser on a connected device. This gives users the flexibility to access the platform from anywhere in a secure manner using their unique Wondershare ID. The best part is that this ID also works across all of Wondershare’s other products. Let’s look at some of the best features of this creative and versatile UI/US design and prototyping application.

  • Rich libraries of platform-specific assets for iOS, Android, and web
  • Dynamic widgets, page states, and extensive gestures and transitions with animations and effects
  • Rapid prototyping using drag-and-drop linking to create intricate interactions
  • Real-time preview with live review and commenting for other stakeholders
  • Easy project sharing using secure and permission-based URLs and QR codes
  • Ready-to-inspect HTML and style code for developers – smooth handoff
  • Extensive options for design systems and UI kits for specific devices and platforms

Wondershare Mockitt offers the widest range of features at this price point, which is much more affordable than many other SaaS design applications like Figma. This makes the product appealing for several types of business all the way from one-man shows to large enterprise-level corporations with huge design teams spread out all over the world. The collaborative nature of the platform and the intuitive, easy-to-use features makes it one of the best web design tools on the cloud today.

Webflow

Source: Medium

Another great website design tool is Webflow, which has been developed along the lines of WordPress but with a lot of additional capabilities. The Webflow Designer utility allows you to use JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5 elements in your design, giving you the tools to create stunningly lifelike prototypes. It is also highly suitable for dynamic content that works off your databases, making it ideal for eCommerce websites and such. Some important features:

  • Comprehensive website design, development, and deployment utility
  • Web hosting platform integrated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Fastly CDN
  • Compliant with HTTPS/2 standards
  • Drag and drop interface with no coding knowledge needed
  • No prototype but there is a staging server to test your site

If you need to go directly from web design to web development, this might be the tool for you. Ideal for smaller eCommerce sites, blogs, etc., and scalable to larger needs over time.

Balsamiq

Source: Balsamiq Wireframes

When you think of wireframing, Balsamiq is the desktop tool that comes immediately to mind. There is now also a cloud version but the classic desktop version is the one most people are familiar with. Balsamiq allows users to create wireframe prototypes that you can click through to test your logic flows and other interactions. Here are some core features of Balsamiq:

  • Intricate wireframing with extensive ready-to-use components
  • Ideal for wireframe mockups and user testing
  • Drag-and-drop editing
  • Linking to databases
  • Feedback mechanism built into the platform
  • Version history – ideal for iterative and rapid prototyping
  • Click-through prototypes

Balsamiq is all about bringing simplicity into complex interactive scenarios. It helps stakeholders assess the core capabilities of a website or application without wasting money on developing iterative versions for testing and feature validation. Though not an ideal design platform for high-fidelity prototypes, it captures the essence of the site in terms of functionality.

UXPin

UXPin dashboard

This is a hybrid model where desktop applications are available alongside the web version. All platforms are collaborative by design, and UXPin is one of the most professional UI/UX design tools around. The best part is that it is code-compliant with prevalent standards, and is deeply integrated with code-ready features that are constantly being introduced. The conditional logic flows, variables, and states allow you to create vivid prototypes that mimic the real product. Key features include the following:

  • Extensive asset libraries that are platform-specific
  • Deep interactions with multiple flow options
  • Integration with Slack and Jira
  • Create intricately interactive prototypes quickly
  • Collaboration tools for sharing and feedback collection
  • Easy developer handoffs

The only drawback with UXPin is that advanced features are only available in the more expensive price tiers, which could make it prohibitive for smaller companies with limited budgets.

Summary

In short, the right tools, the right skills, and a knowledge of what’s happening now in the world of web design are all critical components in the website design process. The right tools will give you all the features you need at the price you expect, and Wondershare Mockitt stands out as the best one in any scenario, whether you belong to a large and global design team or you’re a one-person design team.

12 Ways To Optimize Your Website For Voice Search In 2024

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Voice search is a new technology that allows you to search for things online using voice prompts. Although it has been around for 11 years, its use has only taken place recently.

Positioning your business on the fast-approaching voice-first world

Smartphone adoption has skyrocketed, thus leading to significant changes in the search landscape. We are quickly getting into a voice-first world with regard to searches.

Besides, as businesses embrace ecommerce platforms in droves, you have no option but to play safe by optimizing your content, website and everything else to keep up with the changing times.

The scramble for the limited number of customers is real. And, you don’t want to miss the piece of the pie.

So how can you optimize voice search and wearable technology to gain a competitive edge over your customers?

● Come up with a good plan of action

As the use of voice for search increases, you need to adapt your business to both current and future voice search needs. That means you have to develop a strategy. You need to evaluate all the keywords you will need, your existing content and future needs. Then you need to produce new content.

● Get listed online

This is good for you if you are a local business. But if you are not, you are free to skip this one. If you are local, one of the ways to prepare for voice search is by ensuring that you have been listed online.

For one, if you are selling wearable tech products, you know that they have limited display sizes. Besides, smartphones use voice assistants – for instance, Google Assistant for Android and Siri for Apple devices.

Unlike Google text search results, the assistants can’t show up search results especially for local businesses. Instead, they show business listings first. Well, in step you are not optimizing your website.

● Research your keywords

Remember your customers will be using voice search and not keywords. That means you will have to deal with increased keyword length because of the nature of human communication.

So instead of targeting a keyword like “pineapple birthday cake”, you need to focus on something like “do you know of any reliable vendors for pineapple birthday cakes?” Voice isn’t about delivering you results options but rather it directs you to a product’s action.

If you are still stuck about it, you can invest in good SEO software to help narrow down to specific keyword string that will work for your website.

● Optimize for local search

After you have done your local listings and produced local content, you need to optimize your listing and the content for local search. Most voice searches target information about paces that someone needs to visit. For example, it could be about “best places to buy fast foods in New Jersey” or maybe “Fast food places in New Jersey”.

How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search SEO:

● Reduce page loading time

Every smart SEO knows that page loading speed is one of the most important ranking factors out there. And, with the increased amount of digital content (including voice) online, the faster your site load will be a determining ranking factor in the future.

According to a study conducted by Backinko, websites that have simple, easily digestible chunks of content rank better on the first pages of SERPs. The same study also found out that Google (and, in extension, search engines) favored web pages with low loading times.

● Use long-tail SEO

While the use of long-tail keywords isn’t as popular as it used to be a while ago, it one of the perfect ways for optimizing your website for voice searches.

There are two main reasons why it works like a charm. One is, voice searches are made through a significantly longer string of text. Secondly, smart assistants are designed to deliver answer-like responses for all queries we make.

As a result, the use of long-tail SEO helps us optimize for featured snippets. As a result, it will always send you directly to the top of search results.

● Target your audience’s questions.

Most voice searches are in the form of questions. Think about the queries people make to Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant. They are all in the form of questions. For example, “How should I bathe my dog?” Such questions. Always make sure you have the right content that fits your audience’s actions.

● Produce voice-search friendly content

Always ensure that you have produced easy-to-read, conversational content. For an automated voice to clearly read, ensure that you have something written at 9th grade.

● Produce more local content

Quite a lot of voice searches are for local content. By producing locally relevant content that caters to the local needs of your people goes a long way into improving your SEO for voice-search and wearable tech. But, your business doesn’t have to be local for you to produce local content.

You can also dish-out tons of local content that will help bring more traffic to your business despite your location.

● User experience is everything

Unlike with the regular SERPs, voice search focuses on one website for querying. Ensure that the voice assistant will be able to access all the info you need quickly. That also means your site needs to be mobile friendly, fast, and HTTPs secured.

● Use schema and structured formatting.

In one of Backlinko’s study, they found that about 40.7% of all Google voice answers came from a Google Featured Snippet. Sometimes referred to as quick answers, these answers are summaries from selected websites and often include a link to the source of the information.

For your website to be featured, you need to ensure that you are providing concise answers to the questions are mostly answered by your audience.

● Don’t relent on regular SEO

When you focus on producing great content and doing your old-school SEO, you are also likely to do well in voice search too. That is why websites that have a high social engagement, better rankings, and high domain authority do better in voice search.

Voice is becoming the next great sensation in the search industry. For businesses to stay on top in 2024, they must be able to perform better voice search SEO on top of the regular SEO.

If you want to see more specific examples, Bookmark, a full-service global marketing agency has also written about the ways to optimize existing content for voice.

 

Best Edits: A Quick Guide to Giving Actionable Writing Feedback

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Best Edits: A Quick Guide to Giving Actionable Writing Feedback
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