Posts tagged web design
Boost Web design and site traffic for free
Jun 7th
Ever wondered how people get those cool real-time photo-linked timeliness on their sites? How about those crazy montage of jumble-up words or those fantastic looking graphs and charts? Must cost the publishers a bundle?
Nestor Arellano
Not really. Kim Pittaway, a Toronto-based journalist, media consultant and digital content expert, recently let on a bunch of editors and Web site producers to her favourite list of free Web design goodies. Pittaway was among the presenters at MagNet 2010, a series or sessions and workshops recently held in Toronto.
Her message was: Great Web design and search engine optimization need not break the bank.
Here’s a sample of her favourite free to low-cost online apps for boosting readers online experience. I’ll put up a few more in the next few days:
Create content in new ways
In many cases, text and static photos are no longer enough.
Pittaway suggests using other Web elements to add some oomph to your site.
For example, you can create a sleek timeline to hang you photos, text and video on with Dipity.com’s timeline tool.
Google Maps and Street View can be incorporated to a site, associated with a photos video or copy to provide readers with additional visual aide that can enhance the reading experience or actually help in decision making.
The site SafeFood Finder uses Google Map to identify the location of restaurants that have had the worst recent inspection scores, The Toronto Star’s map of Canada’s Afghan Dead plots out the Canadian cities that fallen soldiers came from.
Add video, by embedding clips from video sharing sites YouTube or Vimeo .
Pump some music into your site from sites that offer royalty free tunes such as Partnersinrhyme.com, museopen.com or get free sound effects and music loops from FindSounds.com and Soundsnap.com.
Automatically make your own slideshows with music, photos and captions with the help PhotoPeach’s Fresh Slideshows To Go.
2. Create a better looking site
Web design know how – Can’t afford a full-blown Web development team? No problem. Get access to technical and not-so-technical instructions, tutorials and articles on Web design and development from Six Revisions. The site is also chock full of freebies such as stylized social media icons, and design themes. Six Revisions is also an excellent place to connect with Web designers and developers.
Free Range Studios, based in Berkeley, Calif and Washington, D. C. also offers low-cost Web design and interactive tool development, Web movies and animation. They specialize in campaigns for not-for-profit organizations such as the World Wild Life Fund, the Sierra Club, Students for Free Tibet, the UN Refugee Agency and the Alliance for Climate Protection.
Free pictures – A picture may be worth a thousand words but these sites contain thousands of photos – most of which could be downloaded for free. Check out: Pixel Perfect Digital, a free stock photo site that also recently began offering premium low-cost images; paid and free photos are also available on the photo sharing site Flickr; and morgueFile contains high-resolution stock photography images free for either corporate or private use.
Car buyers chose function over flash in auto Web sites
May 27th
What makes a great auto maker Web site?
Flashy car pictures? Videos of speeding cars or SUVs truckin’ along mud covered rought roads? Hardly. According a recent survey conducted by J.D. Power and Associates Canada.
Nestor Arellano
The survey company found a definite link between online experience satisfcation and people heading to the auto showrooms for a test drive. However, in my story Savvy Web sites drive buyers into auto showrooms, Ryan Robinson, the company’s industry practice leader, reveals that a lot of car makers have their Web strategy all wrong.
“Of course buyers want to see beautiful Web sites. But the main reason the visit the sites is to get information that will help them make a purchasing decision,” he said. In other words: Flash is fine but we want functionality.
Designing a product vs. designing a user experience
Feb 16th
In day-to-day life we often come across products that stand out. Some stand out because they are so good, some stand out because they are so bad and many fail to capture our attention or imagination in any way. 
The factors that separate a good product from a middle of the road product are sometimes difficult to nail down. If we put aside how well a product is marketed, and what role factors such as brand recognition play in the success of a product or service, we can start to peel away some of the outside layers and look at the product itself. Read the rest of this entry »
Good design for bad economic times
Jan 4th
As we embark upon the adventure that is 2010 we arguably leave behind us the worst of the recent economic downturn. As far as economic downturns go, this one was a bit of an anomaly.
Perhaps the most striking thing about this downturn (or recession if you want to be technical) is that it was, at least in the United States, the worst recession since the 1930s. This designation was earned due to sheer length of the recession and its subsequent economic impact.
The tricky thing about recessions is that we don’t know that they’re over until they’ve been done for quite a while. There has been no official, definitive declaration that the recession is indeed over, but many signs to point to just that.
So the question is what does good design have to do with this knock-em-down drag-em-out recession that we just had? What lessons are in it for us? Read the rest of this entry »
