This question is something odd, but when it comes to the practicality it is often a question to be thought and well planned about. We can see that there will be websites, which are well built and designed but is almost invisible when searching on the web. Similarly, there are websites that will show up amongst the top of the web results for effective utilization of the SEO tools. However, the user will end up in not revisiting the website due to lack of effective web designing.

Therefore, it is clear that if you want to boost your business online, you have to think well on these two aspects contributing equally to add revenue and popularity in the web. Your website should be not only rich with the information to your target market, but also give a good visual retreat to your customer or the visitor. Remember that you are selling your business to the world and there are several similar website in the market. Your uniqueness should be defined and convinced equally compromising to the graphic and content retreat. Once you are able to succeed in these aspects, you just have to watch bringing up revenue to your business.

Effective Mix of the SEO Tools and Web Design

A good website should be a mix of an optimized keyword specific web page that will enable to get at the top notch of a search engine. While designing a web page utmost importance has to be given by the web owner to see that the desired keywords are incorporated with the content that easily help a visitor to get they are exactly looking for. Similarly, you should not compromise about the visual graphics that attracts within the first 5 seconds to stay on the page by a visitor. The navigation of the links and any sort of the content a web page is giving importance has to be neatly and in precise to be delivered.

Therefore, the key here is that your webpage should be equally contributing to the user and to the machine. In order to achieve this what is required is to plan and define at the redesigning and web development process the route map on how the website has to be, define the purpose and objective of the website and the links to be appended. The design and structure should convince the user on the information they seek. If the website succeeds in it, it definitely wins the user’s heart to end up as a frequent visitor.

Pictures speaks more than words

Web designing is not just about putting colors or logos or some animations. It is a visual presentation of the content for the visitor. There should be a clear message that has to be passed to the visitor. It is the task of the website owner to convince and propagate the ideas to the web designer about the desired structure and layout of the web page.

Marketing your website

So this means to the website owner that he is going to market the webpage. This is a product and how you advertise a product to churn revenue, it is the same way marketing your product online.

Therefore, you have to formulate a marketing strategy to sell your business and the marketplace is your webpage. Surviving in the online market is about effectively selling your products with the right caption on the designing side and by understanding the customer’s needs on the marketing side. Therefore, if your business has to get attention into the market, you need to adopt the right marketing tools and techniques to get the return for your investment. These can be only be realized when there is the right combination of a good write up and a pictorial representation of what your business has on offer to the customer. This must be delivered through your website.

When you talk about the marketing strategy, the important aspects of marketing like the target market, the demography, the peer comparison of the market segment etc., the pricing and logistics channels etc., needs to be taken into consideration. Every aspect of these has to formulated with your web designer. We witness failure of many eCommerce sites to show up at the top of the search engine results. What actually happens is they simply copy the contents provided by the manufacturers in their brochures. Such things will only lower the ranking of the eCommerce website or any of such kind. This not only wastes the time and cost of the business owner, but also can adversely bring down the customer’s expectation to that business profile.

Adoption of Creative Writing and Good Marketing

So, it is the rephrasing that gives the right task in creating a niche amongst the peers. Your website should be creative and predictive to the changes that are going to happen with your business segment. Your products and services and the uniqueness it gives to the customer should incorporate to the write up of the webpage. It should be able to convince the customer in staying on to the website and grab attention for what your objective is. Once you are able to convince the user, you have won the heart of the customer and delighted him. Therefore, effective marketing strategy always plays a key role in bringing up your business to the right path.

Equilibrium of SEO and Web Designing

A good website with effective keywords and graphic interface can impress the visitor for its professionalism. It implicitly gives an idea to the visitor about the team profile and provokes to revisit the web page. Moreover, adoption of various SEO tools for search optimization can boost in delivering the desired result.

Therefore, if you ask that which is more important SEO or web designing, both maintains equilibrium in the website.  Shortage of any of these can bring an adverse impact to the website owner. Investing more time rather with cost is always important for your business to get noticed in the web world.

Visitors to your website will make a pretty quick decisions regarding how they feel about the aesthetics of your home page. In fact, it’s usually your best shot to make a good impression on a first time visitor. If that visitor deems that you haven’t taken the time to come up with an attractive and functional layout, then they aren’t likely to stick around for your content.

The idea is that once someone has their eyes on your page, they should be immediately drawn in and excited about seeing more of what your site has to offer.

While that alone isn’t enough to win them over, it might be enough to get them to spend some time getting to know your site and browsing through your content, which can eventually lead to sales, faithful readers, subscribers and ad-click conversions.

So we need to ask the question: What should a website’s look and feel do for a visitor, and what kind of reaction or thought response are we looking for?

The three primary goals would include the following:

1. We want our user to have a comfortable grid with which to browse our content — Everything that isn’t content-related should serve to make the user more comfortable with reading or engaging with the actual information on the site.

If the user has to contend with distracting or confusing colors and patterns, or an interface that’s hard to navigate, they’re going to have a difficult time getting comfortable while making use of the information on the site.

2. The user should assume the site’s professionalism — Once someone sees your website, you want them to immediately assume that due to the layout and overall presentation, your site is reliable and professional.

One might think that you can’t accomplish this quite so quickly, but it happens sooner than you think. Before the user takes note of even a single sentence of your content, they’re making a judgment call about the professionalism of your organization based on the appearance of your web page.

It might not be a fair assessment either way, but you’d be better off to have it working in your favor.

3. The user should find the website instantly appealing — Every web designer should take into account that people visiting any given webpage are at best staring at a 20 inch monitor, and these days, probably something much smaller. All that means, is that any appeal your website might afford that user will happen right away, without much consideration.

Your website’s presentation and design should do its best to make your page appealing right away, without requiring that the user “gives you a second chance” by having to browse through more of your site to decide whether or not they even want to be there.

You don’t want to have the benefit of the doubt; instead you want to avoid doubt entirely.

Using Established Conventions

Accomplishing this for your website’s visitors involves careful consideration, but thankfully, there are some conventions for website design that we can tap into. Understanding these conventions ahead of time can help you at least set up the framework for your design. Once that’s in place, there’s still plenty of room for your creative energy and artistic ideas.

So let’s take a look at some of the more broad principles of good website design to see if we can determine exactly what it is that makes a website attractive.

Creating the Grid

By “grid” I’m referring to the structural framework that shows up both behind and around the content we have on our web pages.

The grid can be thought of as the platform that we use to showcase our content, being made up of the header, footer, body, background and sidebars.

Since we’re trying to make certain that visitors are made more comfortable by that grid, these are the qualities that we should pursue while designing each component.

1. Minimalism

As far as trends in web design are concerned, minimalism is becoming more and more popular, especially with greater emphasis being put by Google on websites being able to deliver valuable and unique content.

Since content is the focus, presentation and aesthetics are by default taking a little bit of a back seat. That doesn’t mean they should be ignored, but rather they should fill the role of showcasing your content.

The best way to achieve this is by a minimalist design pattern, which will usually employ a simple color scheme, an easy-to-navigate layout and textures that are soft on the eyes.

We’ll get into the specifics of these in a bit.

Layout

If you want to adhere to a minimalist design then you’ll need to start with your layout. A lot of how you have your website’s components arranged will depend on what type of site you’re creating. However we can still take each component and come up with some reliable and consistent best practices.

• Header — Your header should be small with text buttons linking to your site’s other pages. Color should contrast well and distinguish itself from the rest of the page.
• Body — The body should be large to avoid compressing your page’s content too much. A white (or very lightly colored) background is usually a must.
• Sidebars — Two sidebars are fine, but if you can get away with one, you’ll be better off. Color should be a bit darker than the body to make sure the content is what’s mostly noticeable.
• Footer — Footers can either be small and simple or bigger with a lot of links. If you go the bigger route, try to have three uniform columns in your footer with certain types of links in each one.

Once you have all the pieces in place you’ll want to start thinking about some of the specifics and how to “dress up” your layout. This will primarily concern your color scheme and the patterns you use.

2. Professional Color Scheme

Choosing your colors can be tricky and for most people, the issue is in fighting off the temptation to incorporate too much color as opposed to not enough. This is particularly true for people who will incorporate a lot of media into their sites.

Remember, pictures and video will provide a lot of color to any web page, so if you’re planning on incorporating those things, you don’t need to compensate with your layout’s colors.

As a general rule of thumb, black, white and shades of gray, tan or blue are all your friend when it comes to color.

Your goal is to develop a professional looking color scheme that fits well together and doesn’t jump at the user too much. You want a visitor to your site to be able to settle into the colors and land easy.

Those are your overall marching orders when dealing with color, but we can also delve into some of the specifics for each area.

• Font — Your website’s default font should always be fairly dark, but doesn’t necessarily have to be black. Black usually works, but sometimes a soft, charcoal gray can be easier on the eyes while still being very readable. Just think about the Kindle reading interface.
• Background — Your background needs to highlight your text, and it does so by basically staying out of the way. A white background is a safe bet, and if you go with a darker tint, make sure it doesn’t hide your text.
• Other Divs — If you have extra divs for boxes within the body or the sidebar, they should have a darker border and match up as much as possible with the color scheme of the sidebar itself.
• Buttons — The best way to do buttons is with simple text links. If you want to do a hovering background color you can, but keep these as simple as possible.

Splashes of color in the form of small icons, text or borders are great for adding some flavor to your site. Just don’t use them as the primary focus of any large areas. If you use color sparingly throughout your site, it will be more appealing to the eyes and will count for more.

3. Subtle Patterns

Once you have color established there might be a few areas where you would rather use a texture instead of just straight color. The most typical place is on your background or in your footer or header.

Where you choose to use texture is up to you, but what’s important according to today’s web design trends is to make sure that any patterns you use are subtle.

Subtlepatterns.com has a huge collection of free textures that you can use for your website, and it’s no coincidence that just about all of them are either white, gray or black. Like we’ve already established, anything fancier can be too loud and obnoxious. A soft gray pattern will have a much more settling effect on the eyes and will make your site a more welcoming place to spend time and absorb information.

Keep in mind that your patterns need to play nice with your colors and won’t necessarily do so just because you’ve done a good job of choosing from grays and blacks.

You’ll still need to do some tweaking to make sure everything looks right when it’s all together on the same page.

Wrapping Up

A website’s beauty might be subjective in some cases, but in general, a funny-looking or poorly designed page will look the same to just about everybody.

Don’t lose potential customers or loyal readers just because you didn’t take the time to make your website appealing and attractive to a wider audience. Once you’ve laid the groundwork, it will be much easier to maintain a modern and appealing scheme.

While your website’s attractiveness is not the end all, an aesthetically pleasing page will at least guarantee that you aren’t losing visitors because of a distasteful appearance.

Put the work in and then hope for the best.

Post image courtesy of Eddie Lobanovskiy

A minimalist logo needs to be clean, uncluttered and void of unnecessary details. Using simple shapes to represent a brand is relied upon in minimalism. Negative space is another common tactic used in minimal design to try and optimize the use of space. The best logos are when no explanation is needed to explain what the brand is about, it can be shown just by looking at the logo.

Take a look at some great examples of minimal logo design below. Hopefully they will inspire you to create your own logo using a minimalist template. Remember to not over-complicate your design and think about a clear message that you want to get across to consumers.

Have you found any examples of beautifully creative, stunningly minimal logos? Please do share what you’ve found in the comments.

When you’re designing an iOS app, keep in mind that it’s the app icon that will be seen on a daily basis. While you’re refining and polishing and perfecting the app interface, it’s the icon that will be seen most often – and so it’s important to spend a lot of care and attention on creating a beautifully crafted app icon too.

A superbly designed icon has unexpected benefits. A nicely designed icon may be more likely to be added to the user’s home screen, and as such could result in your app being used more often. It may even be the difference between a user choosing to download your product from the App Store instead of a competitor.

To help give you some inspiration, we’ve collected some amazing examples of expertly crafted, beautifully designed app icons. We hope this collection gives you some creative ideas for your next iOS app design.

Have you found any examples of beautifully creative, stunningly designed app icons? Please do share what you’ve found in the comments.

About PixelGlyph

PixelGlyph is a set of icons, and it comes with two versions.

The free version has 2 sizes (16 and 48 pixels squared), 1 color and in PNG format. You can directly download this 4.2MB zip from its website. Just leave your email, and download link will be sent to your inbox. No other information required.

For $25 version, besides PNG files, FileSquare provides you with the vector source files in AI and EPS formats. It’s better for you to have vector icons because you’ll be able to change them into the color and size that you want.

Preview of the icon set

How to win the PixelGlyph Pro icons?

In order to win this giveaway:

• Like our partner magazine Fribly on Facebook
• Share the post to Twitter or Facebook
• Submit your Facebook account link you used in the comments below

Only one entry per person please. We will randomly pick 5 readers and announce the results on 1st April 2013. Best of luck.

Winners:

• Michael John Burns
• Essam El-zinaty
• Vidit Kothari
• David Wijaya

One of the most common misconceptions about guest blogging is that it’s only for link building.  Guest blogging should be about more than just link building, it should be about relationship building.

Build an Audience, Not just Traffic

One of the most important things for the life of a blog is your audience.  An audience is more than just traffic that comes to your blog; it’s the readers that come and stay.  They sign up to see more from you and they want more from you.  They are the loyal fans of your writing because you give them a reason to keep coming back, something valuable.

Guest blogging is about helping to build that audience.  Most often, the reason you guest blog is to gain a reputation on the web.  You’ve started a blog and need to build an audience, you need to build traffic.  By guest blogging, you get to post your work on other’s sites who have already built an audience.  It’s about building relationships with the audience of the other blog and converting them to your fans as well.  It’s also about building a relationship with the host of the blog, so that you are invited to post regularly.

Relationships with Other Blog Owners

Following up with the blog owner or editor after a post is also a great way to build a reputation that shows you actually care more about the community than just being a link builder.  Blog owners always appreciate guest writers who care about how their blog is doing and how a posting did because it should be a goal to not only to help you but to help the other blog as well.  Otherwise, the blog owner has no reason to continue to invite you back to post more.

Some might think that building a relationship with other bloggers is counter-intuitive and will work against you, but the blogging community is a helpful, tight knit group that not only enjoys helping others, it understands that by helping others, you help yourself.  Google and other search engines also look for quality links to help move your site up in the search engines.  By working together, bloggers can build these quality links, so they need each other to do it.

Always Post Quality Work

Yes, you can just post to the mass guest blogs sites that will allow you to post anytime and anything.  But  to really gain an audience and help your search engine rankings, you need to post quality guest posts on quality sites and there is no better way to do it then by gaining a relationship with a blogger who has a high traffic, quality site that invites you to post to.

A big no-no for guest bloggers is posting anything less than high quality work.  Don’t just save your quality writing for your own blog.  Remember you are working to build an audience, to gain the reputation of being an expert in your chosen niche.  Always post quality blogs no matter where you post online, including the mass posting sites.  You never know who might be reading your work.

Don’t Forget Your Bio

Make sure you write a nice little bio up for yourself to go on your work.  Your guest postings are about traffic and audience building so you want the readers to know where to find you, in the event they want to see more from you.  Don’t make it too long and include all the necessary links back to your website or blog.  Make it easy to find you.

Remember the Social Media Connection

Since most bloggers also set up their blogs to post new postings to their social media outlets, guest blogging gets your posts seen by more than just the blog site you posted too.  It also gets the article out to all the social media sites that the blog owner uses.  Most often, that is the minimum of two sites or more.  So not only is your work being seen by followers of the blog but by social media followers who have the opportunity to repost your post and to seek you out.  So when guest posting you are not only gaining potential traffic from the one site but several sites.

Finally, remember that karma comes around.  Invite other bloggers to guest post on your site.  Share the love around and you will be rewarded with lasting relationships with other bloggers and a faithful audience.  Remember to post only quality work, no matter where you are posting and maintain your relationships.  Let everyone know that you are thankful for his or her support and with plenty of hard work and persistence, your blog or website will be successful.

CodeInWP is giving away 1 Simple PSD to WordPress Theme conversion service ($149.00 value) to Ahmad Hania Blog readers. You can find the details for how to win after the jump.

What is codeinwp?

CodeInWP is an amazing PSD to WordPress conversion service. They can convert your design into a high quality, cross browser compatible WordPress theme. CodeInWP is exactly what you need to turn your design into a fully functional WordPress theme that is ready for you to upload. Just use Photoshop to put a great-looking theme together and then pass it to the experts.

What They Deliver?

CodeInWP goal is to make sure customers are 100% happy with their work. Therefore they give you the opportunity to first test the theme on a demo server. If there is anything you would like to add or modify they are there for you. This way, they make sure that the final product meets all of your requirements.
CodeInWP also have a money-back guarantee, so if you want to cancel your order, you get your money back.

How to win the PSD to WordPress Theme Conversion?

In order to win this giveaway:

• Like our partner magazine Fribly on Facebook
• Submit your Facebook account link you used to the comments below

Winner will be picked randomly with the query below on 1st of March 2013:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=1465 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

Good luck everyone.

The Winner

• Vidit Kothari

Congratulations.

WordPress is favored by bloggers all across the world, and qualifies as one of the most popular blogging platforms on a global scale. Make your WordPress your own; customize, enhance, structure and more, by shifting your attention to great plug ins that are worth investing your time and money!

With over 21,000 plugins make sure you’re opting for the ones that match your preferences and needs the best, whilst delivering the greatest results! Each blogger is different, however here’s a list of 10 great WordPress plug-ins every blogger should get to know;

1. W3 Total Cache

Well respected by many of the credible voices behind social media, naming Mashable.com as one, W3 Total Cache is a brilliantly fast and sophisticated plug in which reduces the download times for the user! W3 Cache also delivers transparent content delivery network integration.

2. Alltop

Not an App or plugin, but you should certainly be aware of the awesome site that is Alltop. Alltop empowers the blogger, feeding you fresh and new information in the form of the latest stories. Make sure you’re added to an AllTopic topic to increase your traffic, keep track of what competitors are posting, and take away blogging tips from bloggers specializing in in a similar niche to that of your own.

3. No Self Pings

Ever find those pings WordPress sends to you every time you write posts really irritating? Well with No Self Pings, you can remove them. Simple as that.

4. Hello Bar

Impressing bloggers with its variety of features, Hello bar is a favorite amongst bloggers and it’s not difficult to see why! It allows you to add a nice call to action or message to the top of the page, perhaps promoting a product or your mailing list. Customize to your hearts content with this plug in- with a vast range of different textures and colors, save your favorite combinations to return to later. Track how many people have viewed your blog with statistics, showing your performance and custom date ranges- enabling you to keep improving!

5. Defensio

Feel secure with Defensio - a plug in that removes harmful content from your blog, whether it’s in the form of spam, negative comments, or anything similarly threatening. This plug in supports most social media platforms, filters through spam, script detection, URL categorization, as well as offering more advanced features such as detailed statistics and support for OpenID.

6. Digg Digg

Don’t let spam drag you down, make sure you invest in a decent anti-spam plug in to put your mind at rest! Digg Digg delivers great results at an agreeable price too- meaning any blogger can protect their blogs from spam.

7. Seven Days

Activate or deactivate widgets on particular days with the smart plug in that is Seven days! This is a great way to make sure you’re not falling behind a step in posting content on the days where it matters most. Extremely useful and efficient, this plug in makes your job a lot easier.

8. SlideDeck

Create your very own slideshows with SlideDeck! Use images, audio, text and include social media feeds, as well as customize the template to match your WordPress design. Simple and easy to use, this plug in is a great way to show off your media.

9. Focus Booster

Focus Booster is all about the Pomodoro technique - a time technique created by Francesco Cirillo in the 80’s. Not a WordPress plugin, but great for bloggers! This smart and sophisticated app ensures that you get your tasks done in the fastest and most efficient way. Choose your task, your Pomodoro will run for 25 minutes whilst gradually going from green to red till it rings a bell and sets a five minute break. This is a unique and great tool for bloggers who find themselves with very little time on their hands!

If you’re unfamiliar, take a look at this video explaining the principles of the technique.

10. WordPress SEO by Yoast

No blogger who loves writing wants to miss out on getting traffic from Google, so it is important to think about your SEO. This plugin on Yoast requires a tiny amount of setup and will take care of a lot of common SEO issues for you – without you having to worry about it!

We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments, let us know what your favorite plugins and apps are that help you with your blogging.

The user interface or UI, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the machine which aids the operator in making operational decisions.

Whether you’re creating a desktop, mobile or web applications you need at some point to design the UI to attract users more. If you are out of ideas or working on a limited budget you can always use a ready made UI kit for your project. There’s a lot of free UI kits out there designed and shared by awesome designers, Here’s a list of 35+ free UI kits for your next project.

Are there any free UI kits that you’ve found or designed yourself that deserve a mention? Please do let us know in the comments.

Getting your content noticed is important and can be achieved through proper SEO writing. Optimizing your content for search engines is how most people will come across your blog or website. When you search a word or phrase, the search engine displays the results; are you listed anywhere? Even if you aren’t familiar with SEO you can easily incorporate the following SEO writing tips into your own creative writing. Just remember that the more you do and learn about SEO, the easier the task becomes. For those who write frequently eventually creating SEO content will be more like a second nature; you won’t think twice when writing.

1. Keywords

Your keywords are the most important aspect of your blog’s success. Using the keywords properly is important. Stuffing a variety of keywords throughout your article especially those that do not blend in with the content, can actually harm your reputation. Your readers should be able to read the content easily and not get stuck trying to decipher the meaning behind a poorly-structured sentence; all because you needed to stuff more keywords in the content. Choose your keywords wisely and focus on one or two throughout your piece. Strategically place them where they might combine with another word that just happens to create yet another keyword. Keep the content’s quality by using keywords wisely and not using as many as possible in every article.

2. Introduction

Most times when you come across a blog post or article on the web it will have an introductory paragraph summarizing what the article is about. This helps readers determine if the information is relative to their original search. It saves the reader time and helps you draw readers who will benefit from your expertise. Always include an introduction to your blog post, article and all other content. Most of us don’t have time to completely read every article we come across so a short summary provides a quick glimpse of what lies ahead in the article.

3. Subheadings

When we’re reading a rather lengthy article, it can be easy to get distracted or lose our place while reading. This mostly applies to lengthy articles that do not contain subheadings or section breaks throughout the paragraphs. Not all articles or posts will allow for subheadings but when possible, use them. For instance, content that is less than 400 words probably won’t allow for any breaks. You might also consider taking a “snippet” of one paragraph and placing it in between paragraphs in a more eye-catching font or style. Don’t go overboard with this though and only use it when it fits properly.

4. Visual Aids

More and more we see images and other graphics throughout online content. Why? Because it catches our eye more so than simple text. Some images instinctively draw you in whether you like it or not. This can be very beneficial for those looking to improve their site’s SEO. Use images in between paragraphs, beside them, or insert videos or slideshows. Infographics are a popular choice for bloggers right now and anyone can create one so you don’t need experience.

5. Share It

Nowadays even bloggers have taken up social media networking so making your content easy to share can definitely increase your SEO. People love coming across something they want to share with others. It’s easier now than ever for a person to do that and allowing this option on your own site or blog gives your content the opportunity to reach more viewers. It’s a fast way to get your content noticed so if you aren’t actively using any social media networks you should highly consider this.

Writing for the web doesn’t have to be hard or impossible. Take the time to cautiously create your content, keeping your keywords in mind and keeping the content easy to read. Remember to break up long paragraphs and include sub-headings when you write more than 400 words. Only choose one or two specific keywords to focus on when creating each post and don’t over-fluff the article. People love easy-going, straight-to-the-point information so always preview your post before publishing and ensure it reads easily and flows correctly.