RSS Feeds and Magazine Subscriptions – choose your own labels and stay informed with articles and posts that are related to your fields of interest.

Color Matching Tools – in case you get stuck picking a color scheme or just need some vivid inspiration, you can find tons of pre-designed color schemes on the Internet.

Free Icon Resources – spice up your website’s design with helpful icons to link to other sites, create buttons, etc.

Collaboration Tools – these make a nice workspace for a team to share ideas and save projects in an accessible environment.  If you and your team are not physically in the office together, you can at least virtually share your progress.

CSS Generators – quick and easy tool to help you create a CSS page

Design Inspiration Galleries – just in case you need to jump start your creative motor.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS3) is a style sheet language that describes presentation semantics of a document written in mark up language.  Basically, CSS separates document content from document presentation – layout, color, fonts, etc.  It is a list of rules that improve content accessibility and flexibility, which is time-saving for Web designers because they can use the list across multiple pages that are similarly formatted.

CSS is now on its third version, aptly named “CSS3.” CSS3 allows a whole new set of rules that account for multi-column layout, new web fonts, text wrapping, text strokes, rounded corners, borders, drop shadows, and image tricks.  Design is being turned up to eleven … a whole new level.

If you are thinking about learning another language, you might want to consider computer-speak …

The Internet does hold a few tools to help you convert your website to a mobile friendly site like Mobify, MoFuse, and Wirenode. They are certainly worth looking into as the Internet and mobile worlds continue to fuse together and could easily bring your business more traffic and revenue.

Web design is also becoming a specialized field.  Not only does it include designing and building websites any more, now you are also expected to know how to make websites friendly for mobile devices, create content management systems, and be well informed in search engine optimization.  The increased amount of tasks has created a lot more work in web design and instead of having one person in charge, you are more likely to encounter web design teams.  Being specialized in one or more of these areas is critical, so better brush up on your HTML5, CSS, and RIA interfaces.

Why is this the case?   Aside from the modern and streamline feel of this “less mess” sites, they also translate better onto mobile devices.

Here’s a nice list of awesome web designs … peruse them.  More trends to come.

World Wide Web Designs

How?  Well, there are a few ways …

• Know your customers.  If you are targeting a more tech-savvy demographic, consider a Twitter account or Facebook Fanpage.  These are great ways to connect with your current and potential clients (see more info in our previous post, Pennies For Your Thoughts).  If you understand and engage with your site visitors, you can build a stronger foundation for your business and increase customer loyalty.
• Timing is everything.  Update your content in a time-appropriate matter and relatively frequently.  This also shows your awareness of current events.  Not all of your content has to be about your product specifically – show others that you are actually a living, breathing human being.
• Make it a conversation.  Being talked at is not nearly as fun as being talked with.  Ask for input, have fun polls, and engage with your website’s visitors.
• Be honest and genuine.  Even though you are communicating through the internet, being plasticity still comes across.  I don’t really like being lied to, and I doubt you do either.

Just think of it as a relationship.  Yes, it takes a little extra work, but building a relationship will turn out to be more fruitful for both you and your audiences.

Part of a small business’ appeal is personal interaction.  When building your website, keep in mind that a lot of people choose smaller businesses to support their local communities.  This should be instantly reflected on your website.  By portraying a personal image, your site’s visitors can feel comfortable and confident with their decision to interact with you and your business.

Another important element is designing a site that complements your products and/or services.  You may have a great design, but if it does not work well with what you are offering, your website will be less effective.  Your website’s design should also appeal to the visitors that you are trying to make customers.  Even product pictures can change how people perceive what you are selling.  For instance, a toy in a box is probably going to be less appealing than a poised toy standing outside of the box.

Finally, your site does not (and should not) be a slough of information.  Design, applications, and various other elements on your website will make the website more engaging.  Think of your website like a presentation you are making.  If someone is just in front of a room, reading off projector slides, you are less likely to pay attention.  However, if the presenter has an interesting visual display and interacts with the audience, the information is more likely to resonate.

Year In Review: Mobility

Expanding mobility and HTML5 are changing the way we interact with the Internet.  Here’s how HTML5 can help you:

• Videos can easily be embedded on websites.  Instead of needing to download a new plug-in or application to embed videos, you can write the video directly into the code.
• A new coding feature is the “canvas,” which allows web designers to create 2-D drawings on entire pages, not just in a tiny box.
• There are new local storage capabilities.
• Drag and drop capabilities are further enhancements, making copying text a lot easier.
• There’s also an improvement on cross document messaging, which is safer than inline scripts and more widely available than IFRAME elements.

Right now, there are only a few browsers that support HTML5 coding, which is the only real issue with the new code at this point.  However, since HTML5 is how must people are designing applications these days for phones, computers, and other Internet devices, it is pretty safe to say more browsers will be picking up the code.

Illustrated by Christoph Niemann and written by the Google Chrome Team, 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web is a great guide to understanding the importance of being on the Internet and what you can do once you get there.

Social awareness is important in business today, so, consider this your chance at virtual social awareness.  Knowing the tools you have and using them effectively is key to any business venture.

See the whole book (and even print a copy for reference!)

Do not ever include animated gifs in any aspect of your website. They are cheesy, have huge file compression issues and produce the poorest quality animation on the web today. Flash introductions/splash pages on your website should also be avoided. Sure, it might seem cool the first time, but it quickly because nothing but annoying when visiting the site repeatedly. Further more, 100% Flash websites should not exist for any business trying to rank on search engines like Google. They can still be found today, but anyone that cared about SEO and keyword density has moved on long ago.

Lastly, ditch the floating menus and the custom mouse cursors.

Because, seriously you guys.

Come on.