Quality New Fonts To Consider For Your Designs

Looking around for the newest free quality fonts takes designers away from their projects. It takes time that they just do not have.

We search tirelessly and diligently for the very best and newest free quality fonts and display them to you, so that you can come to one place and quickly and easily download free fonts for your projects.

Professional free fonts are vitally important in web page design. Precise, accurate, balanced geometric forms give written characters that special clarity, sharpness and elegance that lifts a web page into another class.

Elegant and professional looking fonts impress viewers, helping your message to achieve its desired effect. There are many excellent professional looking font styles that will appeal to professional web designers for use in their work.

When a web designer chooses a professional quality font, the very look of the text invites and encourages readers to read. Just to encourage people to try some of these free quality fonts, I have added a few to this article.

Campton

Hans Kendrick

Anke Sans

Moderne Sans

Densia Sans

Duma

Gaspar

Simplifica

Source Serif Pro

Cocogoose

Berlin

Quicksand

UGO

Encode Sans

Gasalt

Dusseldorf

Cortes

Railway

FARRAY

Tiny Tim

Overpass

Sant Joan Despí

Streetwear

Ostrich Sans Heavy

Rose

Original Source - http://www.designyourway.net/blog/resources/quality-new-fonts-to-consider-for-your-designs/

Designing An Effective Homepage With Usability In Mind

Like the old saying goes, your first impression is your last impression. And that is certainly true for your website’s homepage.

A company’s homepage is like the entrance to a whole new world you want visitors to explore. If, however, they are not impressed by what they see they may decline your invitation in favor of websites that are more attractive and inviting.

This type of reaction is not unusual; the reason being that a lot of websites suffer from poor design. For example, some designers tend to pack too much content into a site, making the visitor feel overwhelmed.

Some sites even bypass the homepage altogether, zipping the visitor straight to the content pages without giving him any indication what lies ahead.

Depending on what they are looking for, users can wind up at your homepage for a variety for reasons. Therefore, your site should have an easy-to-find and user-friendly navigation bar so that the visitor will know where to go once he lands on your page.

Here are some prompts you may want to consider:

Explain what you do

A small initial description is an integral part of a website’s homepage that informs the visitor what your site is all about. Think of it as a mission statement that tells the visitor what your purpose for existing is and what you hope to accomplish.

Even companies that are well known must not skip this vital part of their homepage as there may be some visitors who are not familiar with everything they carry. They cannot count on their popularity alone to compel a visitor to snoop around until he finds what he’s looking for. Remember, internet visitors have a very short attention span.

The navigation bar should also include subcategories that point to featured products and specials. The site should also include a search box so that the visitor can search the site by keyword. In addition, a messaging service should be made available so that the visitors can query the site administrator for further information.

Should a visitor land on one of the deep links as the result of a search engine query, he should be able to easily navigate his way back to the homepage should he wish to do so. Such a feature is characteristic of a well-designed website.

Set your goals for the homepage

Keep in mind that the goal of the homepage may be slightly different from the goal of the site as a whole. While the site is designed to sell products, the homepage’s job is to entice visitors.

This means that a homepage should be attractive enough that it causes the visitor to want to investigate the rest of the site. This will be uppermost in your client’s mind, so you should make every effort to make it happen.

The homepage is viewed as prime real estate and, therefore, should be used to introduce new products and services that the site visitors may not be aware of.

Naturally, you’ll want to give priority on your homepage to products that bring in the big bucks. If those products also generate revenue from subscriptions, make signup easier by having the signup form prominently displayed on the homepage.

Decide what features are necessary to achieving the site’s goals and prioritize them according to their importance. Then, design the site with the prioritized features in mind.

Make it clean and trustworthy

Visitors also like to know if the site can be trusted before buying its products and services. So, if your business has been around for a while, let them know by proudly displaying the establishment date of the business.

In addition, highlight any awards the business has received. Posting testimonials from satisfied customers is also a good idea. All these things will go a long way toward instilling trust into your site’s visitors.

Keep in mind, however, that simplicity is very important in a user-friendly homepage design. Nothing turns a user off like a cluttered homepage. In addition, putting too much stuff on your homepage can significantly slow down the pages load time.

So, before adding a new element to your homepage, ask yourself whether it is absolutely necessary for it to be placed there.

Mistakes you shouldn’t make

Some designers make the mistake of adding too many widgets and redundant navigation on the homepage. They even add content on the homepage that would be better suited for one of the inner pages. This is a prime example of poor design.

For example, in some UX projects, a disproportionate amount of elements is given to the homepage. It is usually the first page to be wireframed and receives the bulk of the designer’s attention, while more of their focus should have been directed toward product pages.

By necessity, login users will require a different homepage once they’re logged in to give them access to features that are not readily available to regular visitors.

If you haven’t thoroughly researched user needs, you may end up focusing too much on the business aspect of the homepage. As a UX designer, you should also direct a lot of your attention to users and their needs as well.

Using a wireframe would be a better way of positioning page elements to give you some idea how they’ll look in the final rendering. If it appears too cramped, question the necessity of each element until you have pared it down as much as possible.

Conclusion

Designing a website is just as much a scientific endeavor as it is an act of artistic expression. Attention must be given to detail, while at the same time acknowledging the site’s purpose and goals, as well as functionality.

After all, it is a website’s usability and not its aesthetics that ultimately determines its success or failure.

Original Source - http://www.designyourway.net/blog/inspiration/designing-an-effective-homepage-with-usability-in-mind/

How Designing Can Turn Visitors Into Clients

Attracting visitors to your website can be an easy thing to do, but converting them into your clients is probably the toughest of tasks and requires a lot of planning. There are plenty of factors that can change the thinking of the visitors and one of them is good designing.

If you are able to achieve that, you will be able to sell your products and services quite easily. Although some people might argue that the quality of what you sell matters the most, yet you will be unable to prove your worth unless you make the design attractive.

Attractive design does not necessarily mean that you have to make your website any fancy, but you have to make it more user-friendly in order to make the visitors feel at home. In case the visitors don’t find it easy to navigate to their desired information easily, they will definitely look for an alternative. So, you have to keep the users in mind while choosing the design.

If you are able to make your design simple, yet attractive for the visitors, they will certainly be interested in buying your products or services. Therefore, focus on the following things more while finalizing the design and you will see some positive results.

Keep updating the design

The most important thing is to keep your design updated in order to show the visitors that you are a professional. In case you don’t focus on this factor, the people who come to your site will get a negative impression of you and will think of you as amateurs. In that case, you will be unable to convert the visitors into clients no matter how good your products and services are.

Make the navigation easy

Let’s say you are interested in buying something online and search some relevant websites. Even if you have found the product you wish to order, you would want to read some information about it. If that information is not easily accessible, you will start looking at other options. So, remember making the navigation as easy as possible for the visitors. Only then will you be able to maximize your sales. This can be done through keeping the design simple and the font readable.

Keep the key information on the left side

According to numerous web usability surveys, people who come to the online pages, spend most of their time viewing stuff on the left side of their monitors rather than right. Therefore, it is important to keep most of the important information on the left hand side of the page.

This way, the visitors will find your website to be quite user-friendly and will definitely consider visiting it time and again, whenever they wish to order something that your offer. However, you have to keep in mind that the right side of the page should not be ignored entirely. You should keep some lesser important information on that side of the page.

Focus more on the top-left corner

Although it is important to focus mostly on the left side of the page, the ideal point where the key information should be kept is the top-left corner. According to the studies conducted related to the page designing, the visitors start by looking at the top-left corner of the page, then come down, move towards the middle of the page and then finally see what is mentioned on the right hand side of the page.

Know where to post images

While finalizing the design of the page, you should be aware of the fact that the images should be positioned in a way that the visitors don’t get bothered because of them. If there is no image required, you should go without any. On the other hand, post as many images as possible, if your website demands so.

Responsive web designing

This is quite an interesting concept, through which the users don’t have to bother about resizing the webpage in order to gather all the necessary information. It can be used in a wide range of gadgets from computers to mobile phones. Other related concepts to this sort of designing are mobile first, unobtrusive JavaScript, and progressive enhancement.

Calls to action (CTA)

This is quite an engaging tool, used in almost all of the modern webpage designs. While designing the page, you have to ensure that the CTAs should be right in front of the users, so they can easily fill the form and answer all of your questions you wish to know. However, this does not end here, as you will have to then ensure the visitors that they will be contacted back and will be provided all of their queries too.

Technology tools

No matter you are involved in selling some products or services, the visitors would want to get some answers quickly regarding your business. In order to convince them to become clients, you will need to add some good technology tools to the webpage.

One of the most used tools these days is the live chat, which allows the visitors to talk to one of your sales representative online and get the answers quickly. Even if some of the users are confused over some issue, your representative can make the clarification and guide the visitor to complete a sale.

Social media links

The social media connections will also help you keep the visitors coming over and over again to your website and the might eventually become your regular buyers. If you have provides links to your social media pages on the webpage, the visitors might like them and will get regular updates about the latest products and services being offered to them. Even if they are not interested in ordering something straightaway, they might end up changing their mind, when they get continuous relevant information about your business.

Tutorials

If you are selling some products online like custom stickers or business cards, especially related to technology, you should add tutorials in your webpage design too. This way, you will make things easier for the users and they might even find your products to be more attractive after watching its video link. However, it will not be an ideal thing to add the tutorial link on the main page, as it should be available with each product separately.

Reviews

Whenever a user visits a website, he\she looks for the reviews of the clients in order to find out the quality of the products or services being offered. Therefore, add this feature to the design of your webpage too, as it will really help in building the confidence of the new members, thus they won’t hesitate in ordering from you.

Customization

Another interesting tool that can help you catch the attention of the visitors is customization. If your business is flexible enough to let the clients choose their products and personalize them, you will definitely end up increasing the conversion rate on your website. Moreover, you can gather some different ideas from all of the visitors through an online survey in order to make them feel valued right from the first time they visit your page.

Customer feedback

While designing, you have to ensure that there are some contact details mentioned on the webpage, so that the customer can contact you and give feedback related to your products or services. If there are some positive things mentioned in the feedback, make sure to implement them straightaway.

Avoid irrelevant stuff

One thing that helps in converting the visitors into clients is avoiding all the irrelevant stuff on your page. This way, the users will get all the necessary information and will not have to search the stuff they wish to find.

By focusing on the above mentioned points, one can design a very good webpage, which will not only attract plenty of visitors, but also convince them to become buyers of the products or services being offered.

Original Source - http://www.designyourway.net/blog/misc/how-designing-can-turn-visitors-into-clients/

5 Tips to Improve Your Local Search Presence

Local businesses are turning to local SEO in order to drive visitors to their physical locations as well as driving online sales. With so many consumers armed with mobile and tablet devices, it is making local search engine optimization such an important piece of every local marketing strategy.

If you are looking for ways to increase your online exposure then use these five tips to boost your local SEO effort.

1. Make sure your business is listed in prominent online directories

One mistake many small business owners make is attempting to get listed on every single business directory they come in contact with. There are many low quality spammy directories that can actually hurt your organic rankings rather than improve them. Focus on local business directories that are related to your industry as well as your physical location.

If you focus on high quality business directories they will actually work in your favor, by helping people find your business when they perform a search in the directories you are listed in. Some high quality directory links can do wonders to help improve the position of a business in the local Google search results.

The easiest way to find local directories is by performing a search. Typing in "South Florida business directory" into Google returned the following results, with a clear indication of a great local business directory.

2. Don't forget the Yellow Pages

The old school, huge phone book might be on the fast track to extinction, but the online YP directory is a must-have local listing. Not only do many consumers turn to it when they are looking up a local business, but several other online communities and social media applications pull their data from YP.

YP is just one of many directory sites that third part applications pull their local data from, but it the most well known and widely used by local consumers. Getting your business listed on YP.com allows you to take advantage of the actual searches performed on the site as well as the other applications that use the YP data.

3. Audit your Google+ listing and make sure it is complete and accurate

There is a very good chance that you already have a Google+ listing, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved. Having a complete and fully optimized Google+ local page is essential if you want your business to be displayed in the local search results. Google displays the local results on the top of the search results, so make sure you take the steps necessary to fully optimize your listing to make a run at that top real estate.

The first thing to look at is all of the information fields available within your Google+ listing. Are they all filled out completely? Make sure that you complete every section of the profile and also include attractive images. Google displays local listing images in the search results. You also want to make sure that the address you have listed in your Google+ listing is exactly as it appears on your website. Even something as simple as writing out "Street" on one and abbreviating it as "St." on the other can cause a problem. You need to have an identical NAP (name, address and phone number) in all directory listings -- exactly as it appears on your website.

Note: If you are not sure whether or not your business has a Google+ listing, use the Moz Local tool to see what local listings your business currently has. This tool will also help you edit listings and removed incorrect listings.

4. Be smart about your social media strategy

There seems to be a new social network popping up every week, but that doesn't mean that you need to use each one. Most local business owners have very little extra time to devote to social media, so it is important to participate on the platforms that will generate you traffic (both foot and web).

Picking the right social media platforms to become active on is simple. Use common sense and put yourself in the shoes of your target customer. For example, if you were a trash removal service you wouldn't want to waste time on Pinterest.

The big three that most local businesses can take advantage of are Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Find out what platforms your target audience is active on and devote your social media time interacting with your market.

Once you have your ideal social platforms identified make sure to let your customers know where to find you. Window stickers utilizing QR codes that customers entering your business can quickly scan are a great way to quickly increase your social following. This gives you a highly targeted social media audience that you can now market to directly.

5. Encourage customers to leave reviews

Local business reviews are important, but you need to gather local reviews the right way. Telling customers to leave reviews or offering them something in exchange for a review is not the approach to take.

A very simple example is printing a QR code that points to your Google+ listing or other local listings on your receipt paper with a simple "Let us know how we are doing," or "We value your feedback" above it. Get creative and find ways to let your customers know how they can leave a review if they wish, instead of bribing or directly instructing them to.

You will want to make your customers aware of the most important review sites. Google pulls reviews from your Google+ listing while Yahoo! and Bing are now pulling reviews from Yelp and displaying them along with the local listings, as seen here:

These five simple tips can help you improve the local SEO for your business. Focus on quality when it comes to local business directories and make sure your local listings are all consistent across the board. Engage socially with your target audience and provide an easy way for your customers to leave reviews. All of this combined will help improve your local search position.

Original Source - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-long/5-tips-to-improve-your-seo_b_5434160.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

Photoshop CC 2014: The best new features

As you’ve probably heard by now, Adobe just launched a series of upgrades to its entire Creative Cloud lineup. The upgrade is free for those who have a Creative Cloud subscription and “2014″ is now added to the title so you can be sure you’re using the latest version.

The list of upgrades is extensive, but for this article we’ll be  focusing on the most important new features in Photoshop CC 2014.

New splash screen

This isn’t a feature nor is it really important, but it does stand out immediately as you open up Photoshop CC 2014. The same layout is applied to all products in the Adobe line and it’s a nice way of letting you know when you’ve upgraded.

I don’t know why, but I was expecting new artwork every day. This seems to be all we get. Nice touch anyway. Let’s move on to the real stuff.

Enhanced Smart Guides

This is truly a gem and after you’ve used it for a few minutes you can’t help but wonder why wasn’t this introduced sooner? Smart guides have always helped us with our workflow by allowing us to perfectly align our layers. Now Photoshop will actually show you the distance between elements.

Here are 3 great ways to take advantage of the new feature:

1. Show the distances from the edges of the canvas to the active layer

Have your layer selected, hold the ‘Ctrl’ key while you have the Move Tool active, move your cursor over the canvas and Photoshop will show you the distances from the edges of the canvas to the edges of your layer.

Note: If you hold ‘Ctrl’ but you keep your cursor over the layer on the canvas, you won’t get any measurements.

2. Show the distances between 2 layers

Have 1 layer selected, hold ‘Ctrl’ while having the Move Tool active, and then position your cursor over another layer on the canvas. Photoshop will show you the distance between them. You no longer have to measure things by using the Rectangular Marquee tool or the Ruler tool.

3. Matched spacing

When creating copies of a layer, Photoshop will help you by snapping your 3^rd copy into place to create equal space between all 3 layers. This is basically an automatic “distribute horizontal/vertical centers” command.

Note: This feature only shows up when you have a minimum of 3 layers in a line, whether it’s vertical or horizontal

Improved upsampling

When you enlarge an image (upsampling) in Photoshop, it will start getting blurry or pixelated. The more you do it, the lower the quality. By converting the layer into a Smart Object, Photoshop tries to maintain the image details and keep things nice and crisp.

Now with an improved engine, upscaling is better than ever. You can enlarge your layers more efficiently without losing as much quality. The details are considerably better preserved and, while the results aren’t as good as a vector enlargement, it’s still a clear improvement.

Resolving missing fonts

Whenever you open up a project with missing fonts, Photoshop will now help you resolve the issue through TypeKit integration. A window will display what missing fonts are available on TypeKit and – if your font is there –  will automatically sync that font to your system so you can immediately use it. If the font isn’t available, you can replace it with something similar.

Fonts search & previews

You can now preview what your text layers will look like by scrolling through your available fonts. Have at least one text layer selected and move through your options by using your mouse scroll or the arrow keys. If you want to skip a font family simply hold down the ‘Shift’ key. If you’re not happy with your options, click anywhere on the canvas and you’ll revert to the original font.

You can also search through all of the typefaces installed on your computer. Just click and start typing.

Note: You have to be careful where you click because sometimes you will select the entire font, including its weight, while other times you may end up selecting just the font family.

So far I’ve had situations where I ended up with fragments like what you see underneath because I didn’t click in the right place. Use Ctrl+A and then start typing if that happens.

Here I’m trying to change Roboto Bold to Arial. The outcome is less than ideal.

 Advanced Layer Comps

This features has been enhanced and makes it very easy to toggle back and forth between big design options. The idea is simple – you’ve created a design, but aren’t sure about some key elements (let’s say the color scheme and the images used). You finish up your first option and create your first comp. Then you proceed to change things up and you create another comp. Now it’s very easy for you to compare your designs and see which one is better.

You also see a bunch of options regarding the aspects of the design you want to update – whether it’s position, visibility or effects. This allows for greater control and makes saving several PSD files for each option redundant.

Conclusion

Is this upgrade worth it? First of all, it’s free to upgrade if you already have a Creative Cloud subscription – so no worries there. If you’re still using CS6, the improvements in CC alone are more than enough reason to upgrade. What you get with the Photoshop CC 2014 version is a substantial bonus.

There are other cool features integrated into the new 2014 package, like Focus masks and better content-aware performance, but I wanted to focus on the upgrades that you’ll benefit from regularly.

The one thing to be wary of when upgrading is the use of plugins. Adobe changed how Photoshop handles them, so developers are scrambling to update their products. I’m sure this is just a temporary issue that will be solved in the weeks to follow.

 Original Source -   http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2014/06/25/photoshop-cc-2014-best-features/