Choosing A Web Design Company For Your Business

There are many people on the internet who call themselves to be web designers. Most of these people either do it for fun or as a hobby or as a part time activity. There are certain companies who undertake website design services as their primary and sole full-time activity. Such a web design company ought to be selected by the business for the best services.

These companies have professionals with great training and knowledge in the field of website designing. The other designers do not possess any such formal training or expertise like a designer from a professional web design company. For the information to be the most accurate and attractive on a website, the best way to go is to select a good web design company.

The company to be chosen should have relevant experience in the field of website designing. Like in case of getting an e-commerce website designed, that company has to be selected that has e-commerce website designing on their portfolio. The company should be ready with an outlay of the website along with the contract.

Formal contracts should be entered into that describes all the aspects related to how the web designer will carry out the designing activities and in what time. The fees and the information that is to be supplied by the client are also mentioned in the contract. The contract increases the reliability of the services of the web design company and therefore is very important.

There are many different types of websites that can be asked for. The business can consult with the website designing company as to which type would be the most suited. A good discussion with the web design company on the various features that is required in the website is important.

Another key factor which is to be seen in a website design company before choosing its services is its update package. Almost all websites need regular updates. If the update package is included in the contract then its fine otherwise, the business must seek the costs that will be incurred for getting a separate update package later.

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6 Tips to Go Mobile with Your Web Design

The use of tablets and smartphones has spiralled in the past couple of years. A wide majority of people are using these devices to access the web, especially when they are on the move. To ensure that your target audience can have a seamless browsing experience on your website when they access it from their mobile devices, it is important to adapt the web design accordingly.

For those who want to expand their market reach through mobile accessibility, the following tips can make their job easier –

1. Simpler navigation – Considering the size of the screen of a mobile device, it is important to simplify the navigation to the extent that users can reach the desired information through an easy-to-use pathway.

2. Finger-friendly tabs – Mobile websites cannot be browsed with the help of a mouse cursor. One can click the links only with their fingers or a stylus. However, because of the small screen size, often the users accidentally click on wrong tabs with their fingers. So keeping in mind the touch functionality of mobile devices, it is important to create tabs that can be clicked with finger tips easily.

3. Content chunking – Dividing the content in smaller chunks makes sense when you are making your website fit for mobile users. These smaller sections make the content readable and more comprehensible for the users.

4. Minimising scrolling – By minimising the use of images and extra content on the page, you can reduce the amount of scrolling that needs to be done by the user. This saves the time of the users and helps them find the desired information quickly.

5. Choosing readable fonts – Again, the small screen sizes can make it difficult for the user to read the content. So it is important to choose a font that is readable on a small screen.

6. Doing away with Flash, Frames and Popups – Mobile Internet connections are relatively slow, and if you stuff your web pages with Flash, Frames and popups, you are driving away your site visitors. These elements make the file size heaving, thereby increasing the load time of the web page and distracting the users.

With technology advancing so fast, it is time to go mobile with your web design with these tips, and gain a competitive lead against your competitors.

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Usability Guidelines for Mobile Websites

Internet-enabled mobile devices have created a niche for themselves in the market. In the last couple of years, tablets and smartphones have become the primary choice for a high percentage of people for connecting to the Internet. There are nearly 1.5 billion mobile web users across the world, and the usage will continue to spiral upwards in the coming years. This means that if your website is a usability nightmare for mobile web users, you are losing out a so many business opportunities out there.

To ensure that your web design is user-friendly for mobile web users, a number of usability principles have to be integrated into the design. This blog contains a set of guidelines that can be followed to maintain high usability in your website design –

Know your audience

Before working on the usability of your web design, it is important to first know and understand the people who will be using it. Unless you know your users, you cannot make the site usable for them. Traditional methods like conducting online surveys and polls can help you gain valuable information about the user preferences. Moreover, web analytics and usability testing tools can also give you great insights on your target audience. When you know your audience and what they want from the website, your design and development process gets easier.

Make it accessible

Accessibility is part of usability. Unless your website is accessible, it can never be usable. When we say accessibility, it can refer to access from different devices, access from different web browsers, and the legibility of the content. So make sure that the site supports cross browser compatibility, and can adjust to different screen resolutions without hampering the legibility of the content.

Simplify the design

Simplicity is the key in web design, whether it is for desktop users or mobile web users. However, in mobile web design, the performance can greatly be improved by simplifying the design to the extent that only relevant and key elements are includes and the rest of the clutter is removed. This practice can also reduce the file size of the site, ensuring better load speed and performance.

Use colours to set distinctions

Colours can be used in mobile web design to set distinctions in the content in a compelling manner. You can easily communicate your message via different colours and guide the users on the site.

Test, always!

Unless the design has been tested from the usability point of view, you can never be too sure. So without taking any risks and relying on your instincts, conduct usability tests to ensure that your website performs smoothly on multiple devices and operating systems. Usability testing is an ongoing process because each year new devices with different screen resolutions and new OS updates are introduced.
As a general rule, always step into the shoes of your users to determine the usability level of your web design.

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