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Top 4 things about design learned from online dating profile photos

There IS such thing as the (statistically) best online profile picture! According to eHarmony and match.com data, here is what an ideal online profile picture should look like for men in 2016.

  • PICTURE OF YOU DOING SOMETHING INTERESTING (PREFERABLY OUTDOOR AND MANLY)
    + 50%

    Do you have pictures from your last time rock climbing trip, or playing guitar on an open mic? It’s time to put them to good use. A picture of an active YOU is proven to increase response rate by 50% because people are interested in interesting people.full-body-online-dating-website-300x225_copy_360

    What does that mean in design?

    When creating a web page or any advertisement, you need to consider the BIG IDEA first. Is it engaging to my audience?  The idea should communicate a positive and an inviting emotion to inspire viewers to act.

  • PICTURES OF YOU WITH FRIENDS
    + 35%

    Skip the selfies, data shows you can get a higher response rate if your friends are included in the pictures. Researchers show having a group picture with  friends can build up your social capital.pictures_of_you_with_friends_360

    What does that mean in design?

    In digital marketing, we can’t just share pictures of our best friends, but we can share testimonials from previous customers. Genuine testimonials build trust quicker than any witty slogans because they are acting as a social proof for your brand.

  • PICTURE OF YOU IN FULL-LENGTH
    +25%

    A full-length picture of you can send a positive signal to your potential matches; letting them know you are authentic and confident. That’s it. That wasn’t so hard right guys?picture_of_you_in_full-length_360

    What does that mean in design?

    Shoppers appreciate authenticity and transparency of your brand. Just like a full-length picture, share behind-the-scene information in your social media, and don’t be shy to give customers a sense of who you are on the about us page.

  • CREATE SOME DISTANCE BETWEEN YOU AND THE VIEWERS
    +25%

    This one is tricky, research shows that men looking away from the camera and don’t display a smile get more response. This look is perceived as confident and pride, which is an attractive trait for many.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

    What does that mean in design?

    As a brand, you can’t just “look away”. However, what this tells us is confidence is coming from within (aka, the brand value), and not any fancy graphics. Don’t be afraid to let the consumers know when you are not a good fit for them. This not only signals you are authentic and not willing to compromise the brand principle just to make a sale.

  • so_what_360

    So What?

    So if someone is taking a picture of you playing guitar on the edge of a cliff while 3 of your friends are standing next to you and one of the “wild-side” you suddenly decided do show off your cliff diving skill, you better make sure you look away from the camera!

     

tinder website design.gif
Now that you have learned something about online dating profile picture and web design.
What will you do next?
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Photo A Day Creative Journey Starts now

I have recently decided to take on a creative Photo A Day journey, or some call it Project 365. The purpose is to encourage us to take a second look at the everyday items around us. Each picture is a small attempt to find creativity in the ordinary and the mundane scenery.

To keep this journey interesting and challenging for future self, I set the follow 3 rules:

  • 1. THE PHOTO MUST BE TAKEN ON THE SAME DAY (DUH)
  • 2. THE PHOTO SHOULD REFLECT MY ATHENTIC THOUGHTS OR EMOTION AT THE MOMENT
  • 3. I SHOULD ALWAYS STRIVE FOR COMMON SCENERIES WITH AN UNEXPECTED PERSPECTIVE

I think should mention where I got this idea from to give the story a bit more flavor.

I have been listening to Question of the Day Podcast for about 4 to 5 months now. I am somewhat familiar with the work by Stephen Dubner, a co-host of the show, since I have been a fan of Freakonomics (books and podcasts). However, James Altucher, the other co-host of the podcast, was new to me.

At first, I really thought James was this outlier that really sees the world a little differently. He frequently talked about how he dislike owning anything material, and he takes on this random creative projects. One of these projects was Photo a day with a short writing. Not sure why, but this idea really stuck with me.
So with the help of Instagram, I embarked on my own version of the photo a day creative journey as of August 4th, 2016.

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Why clouds get people to buy more expensive beds

In marketing and advertising, the heart of any campaigns is the lead generation engine. This engine is designed to convert web traffic into leads, or sales. This engine is often a website or a landing page with a call-to-action. The creative goes into designing highly effective web page starts before even the visitors read your sale pitch.

According to Robert Cialdini, the author of PRE-SUASION. We often unconsciously influenced by the environment surrounds us. This translates nicely to website design. A study documented in PRE-SUASION found that if an online mattress store website included clouds in the background design, shoppers are more likely value comfort over price. Therefore, they tend to purchase more expensive mattresses than they would have .

Yes, you heard it right. Tastefully including images of clouds on the website background has been proven to increase average order amount for online mattress stores.

Before you including pictures of clouds to all your pages. There are more to it. When it comes to selecting the right photo on your website, answer the following questions first

  • DOES THE IMAGE MATCH WITH THE OVERALL DESIGN STYLE?
    If your website is designed with modern, minimal and spacious look, adding a cartoony artwork can destroy the entire brand experience.
  • DOES THE ARTWORK COMMUNICATE THE SAME BRAND PERSONA?
    Let’s say your brand is building on value and competitive pricing. Then, having a luxury lifestyle background image can come off as disingenuous.
  • DO PEOPLE IN YOUR ARTWORK LOOK LIKE YOUR TARGET MARKET?
    If people can picture themselves using your products, they are more likely to buy.
  • DO YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE THE ARTWORK?
    If you didn’t purchase of picture from a credible source or you didn’t take the picture yourself, chances are you won’t be able to use the artwork for commercial purposes. You should double check before posting on your websites.

The right artwork for your website set the right tone for your sale pitch. Now that you learn a thing or two about picking artwork, the next time you visit another online store website take a look at what others to get you to buy more on their stores

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Web Design Trends You Can Expect To See In 2014 (part 2)

Technology is changing continuously especially in web design sector. Every year new trends are coming in this field, and they are offering exciting changes in web design technology. Here you will get details on some brilliant changes of web design trends in 2014. I am sure; you will get that how many trends are changed till now and what you can see in upcoming days. So, read bellow the expected web design trends in 2014:

Non-boring typography (bevisionare)

 

1. Non-boring Typography

 In 2014, you can expect to have a non-boring typography because expert designers are trying to bring out some interesting ways of type. In this area, you can expect to have a new trend called “fonts with personality.” These fonts will feel like you have never seen before. The experimenters are trying to introduce some new font designs in the new way.

 

Capture - Flat Design (Fit in Stand out)

2. Flat Design

It was expected in the last year that Apple will bring some significant changes in its cell phone models and designs. But in 2014 apple has developed iOS version and brought sparkling iOS7 with aesthetic design. Almost people in the world call it the flat design. It is called the most improved handset version of iPhone and now available in the market for purchase.

3. Large Hero Areas Quickly Killing Sliders

Capture - Large Hero (baystreetbiergarten)

You can consider it as the number 1 trend in web design in 2014. These days every website is using the large hero areas, in which they mainly show useful images or company name in sparkling fonts. More and more websites are adopting this trend and trying to improve their impact on their visitors. In every real estate business website, you will see it with charming images of properties.

 

4. Manipulated Imagery

Capture-Exposure (Manipulated imagery)In 2014, you will get useful tools to manipulate images. I mean to say you will be able to edit images according to your needs. It is expected to get images as overlays, indistinct images, which will come with filters. This year is going to be an incredible year in which plenty of significant trends will be seen in web design. Image manipulation is one of them.

 

5. Simple Color Schemes

Capture Simple color (fds)It is well known fact that colors play a vital role in making a website attractive, but in 2014 trends are changing. You are going to see many simple websites on the internet. Off course, those websites will come with excellent graphic quality, but they will use only one or two colors. The designers may choose only one color as the main color and one for the hue. You may see some famous color combinations in websites like black and white and blue with black.

 

 

All these trends are expected to see in year 2014. Well, you can also check the changes arrived in web design sector till now and which are about to come. For sure these trends will be amazing in web designing field and make some significant changes. For sure you are going to experience many better things in 2014.

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Web Design Trends You Can Expect To See In 2014 (part 1)

Since the internet has been introduced, there are many amazing changes has been seen in web design trends. That chain is still on and just like 2013 you are going to see new trends of web design in 2014 also. These trends will make websites much better and useful to gain better response from visitors. Check bellow that which new trends you can see in 2014. Maybe some of them have occurred, but you have never considered them.

1. Crazy, Sexy, Cool Stuff 

What do you think about running an entirely animated by using parallax scrolling technique? I know this will be a different, but great experience for you. You may see few websites on the internet that will come with fully animated graphics and newer features as parallax scrolling. It is a great concept which will add a new trend in web designing field. This method is cool and amazing. I have seen a website based on Highway-One-Roadtrip. It is prepared by using crazy, sexy, cool stuff, but the main attraction of this site is, its parallax scrolling technique.

2. Long Scrolling Sites

People, who are frustrated of changing website’s pages, they are now going to see long scrolling websites again. Before few years, long scrolling sites were in trend, but these sites were replaced by new short page websites. By the way in 2014 you are going to have some long scrolling sites with much better content format and user-friendly representation of data.

I have seen many long scrolling sites in last few months, and I realized that the trend is significantly changing in web design. These websites are quite different from their old version because they are coming with new layouts and perfect graphical representation.

3. Videos In Place of Text 

Capture - Video replace text(whiteboard.is)According to the expected trend in web design, you will see many websites with videos or flash on place of content. Hence many people prefer watching videos about their seeking things instead of reading content. You will get many websites with videos. Whatever you will like to know in that website, they will acknowledge you through the videos. You can also see websites with videos and text. It will be on your choice that which kind of way you prefer to know. This change in the web design trend will reduce complexity of learning and understanding new things.

 

Among all these three likely trends of 2014, I have as the parallax scrolling website too much. I have seen the tobi’s story site and realized that how creative it is. This website opens features with the help of animations. It is quite easy to operate and use. With the second attempt of long scrolling websites, people are going to enjoy the web surfing with such wonderful trends in web designing. Videos are coming on the place of web contents to reduce people’s web surfing time. You can also see some flash images on place of content as available in wiki answer.

To be continued…We will wrap up more fresh trends coming to next mint!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us! We’d be more than happy to learn about you and share our stories.
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Tips on How to Be Creative

How many times your creative directors have told you to be MORE creative, like, to think outside of the box?

Creativity isn’t just all outside-of-box thinking; it involves a lot of counter logic thinking. For example, human face should be more or less oval. But in Picasso’s paintings, they are square, triangle, or even in irregular shapes. That was creative. In this case, creativity is abnormality. Creativity is also about originality. So if you tried to draw human faces in strange shapes, you might be called a copycat. In the design industry, plagiarism is a big NO-NO.

So how do you get new ideas? Here are three few tips we want to share with you.

1. Brainstorm Till You Can’t

Brainstorming is the thinking of solutions. The whole point is to get you come up with solutions to your subjects. Start with very basic and obvious answers that even a three-year-old would know. And, then gradually, you let your brain fun wild as if a cheetah set free in a chicken farm. So wild. So free.

You can brainstorm alone, or with other people. Record your thoughts via a preferable method. Some people like to draw on papers. Or you can go electronic. At the end, you will be able to see how far you have gone from that basic and obvious solution. It’s the path to creativity.

2. Know Your Limits and Work Beyond It

Limits means more than your understanding of your own capabilities. It also require you to be willing to learn and adapt new skills, techniques and

culture. It’s never too late to learn. Try something new. Try something you didn’t think you were good at. Try something different. Designers get known for their own style. However, within each unique style, new elements could be added in.

Some clients are very specific and know what they want. But for you, the designer, creator and artist, it doesn’t hurt to try to play with multiple elements and style. As it works out well, you would create a masterpiece to be remembered.

Google designs different logo according to special holidays, memorials, culture everyday. So it keeps everyone curious about what the next one would be. They have combine different elements. Initially, it was image. In the past few years, it has become more interactive with Internet users.

3. Refine Your Ideas and Skills

Creation of your design and product isn’t the last step. It’s refinement that perfects and completes it, just as a good writer need a good editor.

Dear friend, practice makes perfect. At the end, your experiences in creating is the key to success. Keep learning, keep trying. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us! We’d be more than happy to learn about you and share our stories.

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Responsive Web Design

The use of mobile gadgets has been increasing, and in 2014 mobile searches are expected to surpass desktop searches. Studies show that 67% of internet users are more likely to access the web and make purchases through their mobile devices. This is where responsive websites come in. A responsive web design is SEO and mobile friendly. A business’ target market, the purpose of the site, and SEO needs determine whether it should be responsive or not. Responsive web designs are currently trending and are here to stay. Here are the 3 reasons why this type of web design is the preferred choice for many. Responsive web designs are:

Google Friendly

Responsive web design is recommended by Google. Google considers this kind of web design the best practice in the industry. Websites that are responsive have a single URL and HTML code, making it easy for the search engine spiders to crawl and index the pages in the site for ranking in search queries. It is also easier for internet users to interact with responsive sites, share its content, and even link to the pages. This improves the users’ experience while browsing the specific site that is responsive.

Access from Different Platforms or Devices

Another reason for the trending of responsive websites is the fact they can be accessed from any platform or device irrespective of type or screen size. This enhances user experience because anyone trying to access the site from any device will do so successfully. Whether one is browsing from a PC or mobile device, the website is configured accordingly to fit onto their screen size.

Ease of Management

Responsive websites are two-in-one, making it easier to manage and run marketing campaigns because only one website with one URL is dealt with.

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Web Analytical Tools: Traffic Proves It All

Making a website is not so difficult any more with all the tools you can learn and use online. But creating a functional and sustainable website is the goal. As mentioned, websites will become more personal and detailed to information. Therefore, the traffic to your website will prove if your websites are being helpful to your audience via your websites.

Designing a website that enhances user experience is extremely important. However, you need to understand your audience first. Demography, media time window, interest, and a lot more. How would you find out? Traffic tracking and analytical tools!

Google Analytics

It’s the most popular analytic tool at the moment. It’s also a plug-in application in some CMS like WordPress, which is very convenient. It gives most of the information you need to understand the visitors at your site, such as referer and their geographic location. It allows up to 50 site profiles, with each has less that 5 million page views monthly.

But Google Analytics’ tracking code sometimes is blocked, which means some users and traffic would not properly recorded. This could lead to false report of websites.

Crazyegg

This heat map indicates where and what gets the most clicks among visitors.

Crazyegg’s heat map indicates where and what gets the most clicks among visitors.

Well, this one is not free. But if you want to learn viewer behaviors on your websites, definitely try Crazyegg.

For example, the endless scrolling is one of the website design trends in the past years. However, not everyone will keep scrolling. There you want to learn where viewers actually pay attention to and where they lost interest. And with the heat map and click-tracking overlays, you can eliminate the least clicked buttons and content. Crazyegg will help you make better websites by studying their behaviors on your websites.

IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management (Formerly Coremetrics)

IBM bought Coremetrics, the highest rated web analytic tool by TopTenReviews.

Like Google Analytics, it also transforms collected data into different forms for better comprehension over the websites, featuring the continuous optimization dashboard. It also help companies monitor their online campaigns and programs by it’s solid web analysis.

Its outstanding costumer services also won trust from many corporations. According to TopTenReviews’ comparisons among analytic tools, it makes the most out of the collected data and shares insightful details.

Webtrends

Webtrends is more than a tool; it’s a package of services. It aims to enhance customer experience, increase conversion, and grow revenues.

Especially in the past decade, websites have grown to be a tool in online marketing. Webtrends is specifically designed and made for companies who targets online consumers and audience. It uses the collected data to analyze your consumers before it helps create campaigns targeting them. Hereby, it achieves its goals in increasing conversion rate and growing revenues for the companies.

It offers different services to best suit your needs for your business.

Adobe Marketing Cloud (formerly known as Omniture)

Omniture was acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion in 2009. It’s a comprehensive set of marketing solutions, including analytics, campaign, experience management,media optimizer, social media monitoring and targeting.

 

 

 

 

Which web analytic tool do you use to understand your viewers and customers and design a better website?

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The Future of Website Design

A few weeks ago, a client jokingly asked us to comment on what websites are going be like in 10 years. At the time I told them, at the pace that digital marketing is going, no one knows!
This question has been following me for a few weeks, and I thought I would give it my best guess. So here are the 3 predictions I have for websites in the year of 2024, if websites still exist that is.

Authentic Content Trumps Award-Winning Screenplay

As more and more people have access to building their own websites, we will start seeing more and more websites built to express ideas, individual opinions and stories. We will value websites less and less if they are only built to sell and promote products.

The End of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Not too long ago, with keywords and tags, you can enhance your ranking on Google within weeks. With the latest Google algorithm update, Google is putting its weight on website structure, credibility, content originality and back-links. In the future, this algorithm will be much more integrated and take into account social media coverage, reviews, press links, store hours, and maybe even the amount of tax you paid last year.

The Beginning of Artificial Intelligence Websites

As software gets smarter and data gets more robust, the websites we can build become more personalized online platforms. Imagine an intelligent website that could configure and re-distribute content just to fit your profile and preference. We are not saying just responsive layout or Facebook integration. I think websites will respond to your device, weather, mood, location, network speed, time of the date and more. Literally, no one sees the same website twice.

 

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Website Design Become More Personal

Yes, it is the trend. I’m sure you notice that websites are  becoming  customized and personal. Websites used to be more informational. As reliance on the Internet grew, websites are now a marketplace for inspirations, promotions and branding. With HTML 5, C++ and JAVA, websites are completely changed and different from one another, making them more delightful.

The idiom says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” But as it is now, you just have to show your capabilities and fine skills on your website because it is one of the only ways for others to learn about you and become interested in you and your works.

It has become the new form of portfolio. We are from different backgrounds and different professions. We have our own way of showing others who we are and what we do. With different programs and themes, we can explore and search for the best suitable style to build a strong and unique brand. Since everyone wants to stand out among billions of website, websites will only become more personalized and customized for different purposes.

Website Trending Styles

Flat UI example

Flat User Interface

Flat user interfaces are actually more popular than you think. Apple’s iOS 7 and Windows 8 both use a flat UI design on their devices. Yet, a lot of design firms and studios are redesigning their websites to follow this trend.

Responsive Sites

More and more people now own tablets and smart phones, which they use for browsing when they are away from computers. Websites that look good on a computer browser will not fit and function well on your six-inch, hand-held devices. Responsive websites automatically adjust for different devices for best appearance and functionality.

Website Trending Useful Tools

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a new tool designed by Twitter that helps programers organize codes in designing pretty website pages, based on HTML and CSS. Bootstrap is used with WordPress to make websites delightful to view and responsive to use. It is also compatible with most browsers.

Bootstrap 3, the new update, focuses on mobile website development. Instead of switching from a website on computer browser to mobile ones, Bootstrap helps mobile websites expand the other way.

WordPress for Website Design

WordPress is still the most popular CMS, especially compared to Drupal and Joomla. WordPress is easier to manage and explore for those who don’t have much experience in coding. Themes and plugins are ready to download and be installed. You can utilize these applications to customize your own website.

Google Analytics and AdWords for Website Design

Google Analytics and AdWords are not the newest; however, they are very useful. Google Analytics will share data with you, where you can find the weakness in your websites. You will be able to learn more about your viewers’ behaviors, such as what page get the most clicks and what time of the day gets the most views.

Not to mention, more human interest and elements are added to websites, such as meet the staff, contact info and social media accounts. Getting more personal is a sincere way to share your stories and work. It will help you gain credibility and trust from viewers.

 

 

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