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Must Read: Importance of Video in Web Design

WebBlog360 — Tue, 14 May 2013 06:23:55 +0000

Video is an online medium that is ever growing in popularity. Not only are internet users consuming more and more video, but most marketing campaigns are also tapping into its accessibility and business benefits. To give you a point of reference, more than 1 billion new users visit YouTube every month. That’s a huge audience that can be reached by utilizing video in your web design. But using video in web design can be tricky, so pay close attention to the tips and examples below.

How Video Optimizes Your Online Presence

Shows users a more personal side of your brand

With video, you can simulate a face-to-face experience for users that allows them to see the human authenticity of your company. It helps them feel that you care about their experience, which then builds their trust in your reliability, professionalism, and quality.

Video also provides users with an opportunity to engage more with your brand. It employs more of users’ senses, which encourages them to more fully engage with your content. The majority of users would rather gain a larger amount of information in less time through video than take more time to search and read through text.

SEO benefits

Search engines place great importance on links and rich content signals to rate a site’s relevance for search results. Video leverages both of these rankings because users are much more likely to spread a video through social sharing than sharing a plain textual post. The rich content signals that search engines pick up from video demonstrates a web page’s variety of media, which is thought to improve overall user experience.

How Video Benefits Your Business

Increased time spent on page

The dynamic and interactive nature of video enhances an otherwise monotonous user experience, so watching videos persuades visitors to stay longer on a page. The simple presence of a video attracts users to a page, and one with good content keeps them there.

Upselling

You can provide clickable links that accompany a video to encourage users to travel to other pages within your site, or to more videos that feed information on products. This can be an especially effective attention-grabber on landing pages. The more helpful content you offer users, the more confident they will be in converting, which ultimately drives your revenue.

Tips For Using Video

Video can serve several different purposes, as described below. If you’re just getting started, this interactive YouTube guide can help you decide how to use video to best serve your site’s goal.

#1: Video as background

Background videos are great for certain web designs, like those that strive to communicate creativity or high quality standards. A large video must be well made and have a clear picture, so this tactic reinforces a brand’s professionalism and excellence. It also immediately creates dynamic interest for the viewer that makes them want to stay and watch. This ad agency creatively pulls the viewer in with a background video that tells the agency’s story in a fictional, retro style.

#2: Intro video

An intro video has many benefits, because it allows users to choose whether they want to watch it. In other words, the video doesn’t usually start automatically – which can help increase page loading speed, and enables users to watch it when they’re ready. An intro video can provide the perfect look at your brand that peaks users’ interests enough to travel further into the site.
This high quality video site entices visitors by giving them a few different video options to watch on the home page for a taste of what can be created through its service.

#3: Product demo

Demonstrations of your product in use are extremely helpful for users to gain an understanding of how it works. This creative software engineering company presents a video of its tablet being used in real life situations, which connects with the audience on a personal level. It also provides a visual demonstration of the product’s capabilities.

#4: Video highlights

Creating a video to reveal the highlights of your product provides a quick means of captivating users. Since highlights are already the best parts of your product or service, the way you present them should be equally interesting.
This dance company shows close-up video of the dancers in action, as a logical illustration of the talent it possesses.

As you can see, video is a very dynamic and engaging media type, and is important to the overall health and success of your designs. However you choose to use video in your web design, aim to take full advantage of its many benefits in leveraging your brand in the online world.

Author Bio

Luke Clum is a graphic designer from Seattle. He enjoys videography and experimenting with different web trends. When he’s not working, you’ll most likely find him climbing or hiking in the mountains. Follow him on Twitter @lukeclum

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Step-by-Step Guide on How to Plan Your Design Portfolio

WebBlog360 — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:35:02 +0000

Plan you design portfolio is integral to create a credible online identity. It is one free space where you can showcase your talent to potential clients, who are looking for professional designers with a well-presented design portfolio that basically emulates uniqueness and organization in design. So, if you haven’t planned your design portfolio yet, here is a step-by-step guide as to how to plan a cutting-edge design portfolio for yourself and your business. I am sure this will help you as a designer to come up with a unique more appealing way to plan your design portfolio that can help you increase your revenue.

Step 1. Preparation and Planning

Preparation is the key to planning a great design portfolio. Not only is it important to plan a portfolio that than project you and your work in the best possible light, but can also create the right base in your evolving and development as a professional designer. At the same time, planning is strategic for the implementation of a design portfolio. Ask yourself a few questions about your target audience (clients), your area of expertise, preferential jobs, etc.

Step 2. Target Audience

Knowing your target audience and understanding their priorities holds the key for planning a cutting-edge design portfolio. Remember, creating your online portfolio is very much on the line of working for a client, since it involves understanding the minds of your target market and customize your products and services to meet their design requirements.

Step 3. Logo and Tagline

Create a striking logo and tagline, since it is the essence of creating an effective design portfolio. This fiery combination can prove to be one of the most important parts of your portfolio since this will not only help creating a brand identity, but also reflect your style and define your creativity as a designer. Always remember that portraying your skills and aesthetics is the ultimate goal with your logo and tagline, but it is equally significant to state the value your portfolio will add to your potential clients or employers.

Step 4. Your ‘About Us’ page

‘About Us’ page is one of the highlights of a design portfolio as it many a times acts as a conduit between you and first-time visitors to your site. Not only can it help building the credibility of a design professional, but can also work towards highlighting your personality, contributing as the decisive factor for hiring you as much as for your skill.

Step 5. Your Portfolio

Design samples are the most important part of a portfolio. Therefore, it is imperative that you showcase your best design to create a lasting impression and preferably your most recent work. Plan a portfolio that has start, middle and an end with an appropriate flow of content. Also, make sure to present high-resolution images, which make examining your designs simpler at full-scale.

Step 6. Blogging

A designer who also enjoys blogging is an art to perfect. Because in the recent times, blogging is one of the most powerful promotional vehicle that can not only drive your passion and share your ideas on designing, but also build a platform for you as an expert professional in the industry – opening up job opportunities and loads of freelance work.

Step 7. ‘Contact Us’ Page

The ‘Contact’ page is often the most overlooked page when it comes to planning a design portfolio; but is essentially the most strategic one. It is the page which cumulates to the entire effort you have put on your design portfolio i.e. to get business. And once a visitor or a potential client decides to contact you, ensure that accessing you through the contact page is a seamless process. Make sure that the contact page is not too elaborate or tedious – Keep it simple.

Step 8. Marketing

It is important to create an effective marketing plan for your design portfolio so as to ensure you a steady stream of projects and a growing clientele. Check out social media tools like Twitter and Facebook, and professional networking sites like Dribbble and LinkedIn, where you can share your design portfolio and get hired to do the best designing jobs from across the globe.

Step 9. Change and Evolve Consistently

One of the winning traits to imbibe when planning a design portfolio is to reflect your attitude to consistently evolve your skills with times and keep yourself updated with the latest design technology; and change your style as per client requirement. So, make a point to update your design portfolio once in a while so as to keep the content fresh as the design graph in your portfolio is surely to improve over time.

Step 10. Practice the Right Presentation Skills

Right presentation skills can be the icing on the cake for implementing a great design portfolio. However, it is not an easy job to project yourself and your work in an effective way if you do not have the right presentation skills. So, practice and improve your communication and presentation skills to promote your design portfolio.

Author Bio:

Ellis is Digital Marketing Manager at VITEB. He is very much expert in Content Writing, Social Media Marketing and Online Reputation Management. Right now he is working with leading web development company having expertise in PHP Application Development, Magento Website Design and hire PHP Programmers at affordable cost.

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List of Useful Softwares and Web Applications To Make Your Life Easy

Mark Allaistar — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:43:22 +0000

There is no doubt that the tech world boom is on the rise and advancements in this world are overwhelmingly becoming important to all of us. Everyday there is a new tool to fix our problems or at least manage them in more efficient way. But as the time passes the list is getting longer and tools are becoming shallower. One need to spend time in trial and error method before he decides to choose the best one. This should never have happened but everyone wants to create something better for consumer which leads to abundance. Though we are here to solve your problem in more intuitive way because we have complied a comprehensive useful list of softwares and web applications that you need in order to do your daily tech related things.

Recommended Reading: 50+ Useful Tools To Create Quick Responsive Web Design

This list of useful softwares and web applications is quite comprehensive as it covers all most all aspects of our life. If you need to manage your project or time, or invoicing or need a perfect online shopping application or perhaps you need help to fix your laptop you can find all such tools in this list. All you need to do is just click the link on the tool you need and use it for good. I am sure there is plenty of something for everybody in this list of useful softwares and web applications. Use them and let us know with your feed back as we would love to have some positive criticism that can help us to bring more useful things to our readers.

List of Useful Softwares and Web Applications

Realmac Software

Postbox

Recommended Reading: 20 Plugins to Make Your Safari Experience Exciting

Espionage

Evernote

Bills

One Hub

Invoy

Versions App

Icebrrg

Anxiety App

Vyew

Screenr

Fluid Book

Lemon Stand

Fresh Books

Legacy Locker

Blink Sale

Mail Chimp

Invoice Machine

Carbon Made

Ronin App

App Zapper

Coda

Pixelmator

Yokaboo

Tumblr

Print Friendly

Trigger

Nicereply

Silver Back

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35 Smartphone Photos You Won’t Believe Taken From Mobile

Mark Allaistar — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:59:14 +0000

We all know smartphones are capable of a lot more than any body has envisaged especially smartphone photos technology has surpassed expectations of many. I often find myself amazed to see how detailed and HD smartphone photos can be. So, taking this inspiration to next level I thought of collecting some which would dazzle you. It would be pitching you to buy a smartphone but I think the penetration by these smart gadgets has already been done. So, behold you all and be sure these are images you are about to see are not Photoshopped but they are definitely instrgrammed and used other filters available in any smartphone. The colors in every picture are so sharp and some pictures can clearly be termed as immaculate examples of macro photography.

But I would really prefer you to check these out for yourself and in order to get the details about any of these photos you can click the image and it will take you the right owner with the description of the photos. I would love to have your feedback and positive criticism on our effort in collecting such inspiration for you.

1. Belfast Castle

2. Hanging On Until The Sun Goes Down

3. Colors

4. Days Eating Into Eternity

5. After Rain

6. Orange & Blue with N95

7. The Fall

8. Mini Lighthouse

9. Basking Reds

10. Dandelion

11. Glasgow, Scotland

12. Hotel Unique (Vignette)

13. Underlined

14. Sunrise On Cannock Chase

15. Kerkini with my Omnia

16. Newton on Ayr

17. Sat

18. Untitled

19. Perfect Timing

20. Shows me colours when there’s none to see

21. Winter in Stockholm

22. Trojan 200

23. The Fly & the Flower

24. Deception Fading

25. Hello yellow

26. Reflections Of Amsterdam

27. Sunrise On Cannock Chase

28. Black Ants Harvesting Nectar from a Yellow Flower

29. The sound of the waves

30. Fada – Old Mill in November

31. Phoney Pic

32. Into the Sunset

33. Sunset

34. Out for a drive

35. Beautiful sunset in the camp ground

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40 Most Creative Design Portfolios For Inspiration

Faiq Ch — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:18:15 +0000

The current times are pretty tough for new comers especially in the IT world as it is very competitive and tough to break in. .com boom was not for everyone but those who are in it and want to survive the battle they need to be more than just ordinary because this isn’t the race of average people. Our web designer friends are also among those who are required to do magic with their code writing abilities especially in showcasing their portfolios. In order to win this competition some designers really stood out and made something inspiring for the rest to follow. In today’s post we are featuring some of the very novel and incredibly creative design portfolios that will inspire you and provoke to be better than just average ordinary web designer. Hope you enjoy and leave us your feedback.

Russian Web Studio Iji Digital

Brian Rhinehart’s Portfolio Kineticshadows

Graphic Designer & Illustrator David Arazim’s Portfolio

Ukrainian Creative Studio Piezo Design

Portfolio of Dutch Designer Evout

Blackpool Web Studio Friendly Duck

Digital Agency Pixelslave

Joey Lomanto’s Portfolio

Robin Morris’ Portfolio Digitalmash

Richard Evans’ Portfolio Edpeixoto

Portuguese Web Studio Cafundo

Art & Design Studio Racket

Australian Web Studio IceLab

Russian Creative Studio Creative People

Nemanja Ivanovic’s Portfolio

Thibaud’s Portfolio

Web Development Studio XHTML Kitchen

Fred Maya’s Portfolio

Meagan Fisher’s Website

Russian Web Studio ONY

Russian Creative Agency NILE

Italian PR Studio Moovents

French Web Studio Adncom

Web Design Agency Just Be Nice

Elliot Lepers’ Portfolio

Czech Designer Tomas Pojeta’s Portfolio

Advertising Agency Instinct

Collaborative of Freelancers Cassius

Web Designer Simon Reynolds’ Site Sr28

Ukrainian Web Agency 73dpi

Marco Rotoli’s Portfolio

Justin Bird’s Portfolio

Liechtenecker Austrian Web Agency

Paul Noble’s Portfolio

SiteSoft Design Studio

Rob Palmer’s Portfolio

Great Britain Design Agency Toasted Digital

Creative Agency SmallStudio

Designer & Developer Nick Coates’ Portfolio

Brazilian Creative Agency Cappen

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Unusual Angry Bird Creations By Creative Minds

Asma Abbas — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 06:05:40 +0000

Mashable came up with a novel idea of setting up a contest of creating Angry Bird in their own creative way. Sharp minds just need an idea and that is what Mashable has given. A lot of entries and the following is what Mashable thinks are the best as far as inspiration from Angry Bird is concerned. The inspiration was from everyone. I hope you like the idea and do leave us your feedback.

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25 Best Minimal Photos One Can Hardly Overlook

Abdul Haadi — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:26:04 +0000

If you think you have seen the best minimal photos but you missed these then you certainly have not watched the best minimal photos. These photos are taken by Hengki Koentjoro a talented Indonesian photographer. He has special thing for creative video and photograph production. The portfolio of Koentjoro is rich with abundance of majestic collection of all sorts of photography. In today’s collection we are featuring his awesome super best minimal photos which I believe are one of the few minimal photos that stand out in every possible way. Minimal photography is not an easy task however, in the portfolio showcased below is perfect example of sheer perfection and utter skillful photography. I am sure you will find these photos inspiring enough to leave us a comment.

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15+ Super Creative Posters for Entrepreneurs

Asma Abbas — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:07:24 +0000

If you are an entrepreneurs and running or thinking about a start up company you mind like to have these super creative posters for entrepreneurs. Now they are of course useless if you don’t get the purpose but if you want to keep your shit together at the beginning of a long career in a respective industry you gotta get a good start. Motivate your employees because that is the key and keep telling and showing them how minor no ones became gurus and whatever they say it makes sense. Following are a nice compilation of creative posters for entrepreneurs by StartUp Vitamin a company which has tapped a good resource of motivational good inspirational quotes and turn them in to posters. These can be used for decorating your new office or just keep it around so they keep reminding you that there is short cut in life and you have to work real hard until the end of times in order to leave a mark behind you. So, that one day people will use your quotes for inspiration. I hope you like these.

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40+ Must See Hilarious Print Advertisements

fasih.khan — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:08:57 +0000

Hilarious print advertisements are in abundance and I know you have seen a lot of these kind of but somehow one cannot get enough of them. Especially if you have a good taste for humor and entertainment. Advertisement has been around ever since I got my senses a lot of things have said and done but no one could minimize the influence and impact of advertising industry. This has resulted a huge industry of print and broadcast advertisements. In this swelling industry every now and then someone tries to impress his target market with something out of the box and the given hilarious print advertisements are definitely worth a watch as they serve the purpose of communicating the message in their own funny way.

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Funniest Images You Have Ever Seen on Internet

WebBlog360 — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:40:06 +0000

If you think you have seen funny then I bet you have not seen funniest images. The compilation of today takes way more funny and hilarious graphic designing I have seen lately. The images are utterly witty and creative the image usage in the designs are perfect to make them even funnier. The collection is made possible from the portfolio of Erin Hanson a Texas based graphic designer though some of the images are collected from other resources as well. However, the crux is that these images are by far the hilarious because they are satirical and very unorthodox. You don’t get to say such words on the Internet. So, I am sure you will give them a chance and have a look at them, if you like them then there is no harm in leaving a message at the end that will make us work more in delivering such content in future.

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