1. Define Your Website’s Purpose and Goals:

Before diving into the website-building process, it’s important to clearly define the purpose and goals of your website. Consider what you want to achieve with your website and identify your target audience. Are you looking to sell products, share information, or promote your services? Understanding your goals will help you make informed decisions about design, content, and functionality.

2. Choose a Reliable Website Platform:

Selecting the right website platform is crucial for building your dream website. Look for user-friendly platforms that offer customizable templates and responsive designs. Great looking WordPress website examples will help you orient better as well as  Wix and Squarespace. These platforms provide intuitive interfaces and extensive features, allowing you to create and manage your website with ease, even if you have little to no coding experience.

When selecting a dependable website platform, it is equally essential to make a well-informed decision about your web design team, ensuring you partner with a skilled and reliable team that can bring your vision to life with creativity and precision.

3. Select a Suitable Domain Name:

Your domain name is the web address that users will type in to access your website. It should be concise, memorable, and relevant to your brand or business. Consider using keywords that reflect your website’s content or niche, for example, IT courses. Use reputable domain registration services to secure your chosen domain name, and ensure it aligns with your brand identity.

4. Design and Customize Your Website:

Once you’ve chosen a platform and secured your domain name, it’s time to design and customize your website. Select a visually appealing template that aligns with your brand image and appeals to your target audience. Customize the template by adding your logo, selecting color schemes, and arranging page layouts. Consider getting inspiration from other websites. For instance, if you want to build a booking website, you can look through the booking page design examples. Ensure your website is visually pleasing, easy to navigate, and optimized for mobile devices.

5. Create Engaging and Relevant Content:

Compelling content is the heart of any successful website. Craft clear and concise copy that effectively communicates your message and engages your audience. Break down your content into logical sections, incorporating headings, subheadings, and bullet points for easy readability. Include high-quality images, videos, or graphics that enhance the visual appeal and complement your content. For this purpose the best WordPress plugins for developers will be highly useful.

6. Optimize Your Website for Search Engines:

To ensure your website reaches a wider audience, it’s crucial to optimize it for search engines. Research and implement relevant keywords throughout your website’s content, titles, and meta descriptions. Focus on creating informative, valuable, and original content that addresses your audience’s needs and aligns with their search queries. Additionally, optimize your website’s loading speed, mobile responsiveness, and overall performance to enhance the user experience. If you are looking for a professional SEO specialist, you can hire a VA from Virtalent.

7. Test, Launch, and Maintain Your Website:

Before launching your website, thoroughly test its functionality, responsiveness, and compatibility across different devices and browsers. Check for broken links, spelling errors, and overall site performance. Once you’re satisfied with the results, it’s time to publish your website and make it live. Regularly update and maintain your website by adding fresh content, monitoring performance metrics, and implementing security measures to protect user data.

8. Attract investors:

If you’re looking to attract investors, incorporating a well-crafted pitch deck into your website is essential. A pitch deck is a visual presentation that showcases your business idea, value proposition, market analysis, and financial projections. It provides a concise overview of your venture, capturing the attention of potential investors or partners. Include key elements such as a compelling elevator pitch, market opportunity, competitive advantage, growth strategy, and revenue model. A well-crafted pitch deck on your website can impress investors, instill confidence in your business, and increase the chances of securing financial support or partnerships.

9. Develop a Mobile App to Complement Your Website:

In today’s mobile-driven world, having a mobile app that complements your website can significantly enhance your online presence and user experience. Once you have built a compelling website, consider extending your reach by developing a mobile app. A mobile app allows your users to access your products or services directly from their smartphones, offering convenience and a more personalized experience. It can integrate seamlessly with your website, allowing users to switch between platforms effortlessly. If you don’t have coding skills, no worries! There are user-friendly platforms available that allow you to build a mobile app without coding.

In today’s digital landscape, building a successful online presence for your business is more important than ever. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can embark on a journey to create a powerful and engaging website that showcases your brand, attracts your target audience, and drives business growth. Define your website’s purpose and goals, choose a reliable platform, customize its design, create compelling content, optimize for search engines, and maintain your website regularly. Additionally, consider incorporating a pitch deck to attract investors, explore the development of a mobile app to enhance user experience, and leverage useful tools and resources like virtual assistants to streamline your operations. Remember, your website is not just a virtual storefront but a gateway to your business’s success. With careful planning, creativity, and a customer-centric approach, your dream website will come to life, providing you with a powerful platform to connect with your audience, promote your products or services, and achieve your business objectives. Embrace the digital realm and unleash the potential of your online presence today!

The post Easy Steps to Build Your Dream Website appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

Good design is deceptively simple. A well-designed website often has a beautiful slider and looks and functions so well that you hardly notice the design choices. But jump onto a poorly designed website, and you can really notice the flaws.

Whether you’re setting up a website for the first time or have been in the game for a while, design really matters. It affects your conversion rates, your credibility, and your customer loyalty.

At its core, web design is about improving user experience – how someone feels when they interact with your website. Are you leaving them with a positive experience that will bring them back again?

In today’s website design practices, it’s paramount to design websites that are mobile-friendly. Prioritizing responsive layouts and optimizing user interfaces for mobile devices ensures a seamless and enjoyable browsing experience, catering to the ever-growing mobile user base.

The good news is web design doesn’t have to be a guessing game. There are a number of web design principles that have been proven to get good results. We’re going to share with you 8 of the most important.

They are:

1. Break up text
2. Show, don’t tell
3. Lead your users
4. Consider your colours
5. Embrace white space
6. Aim for familiarity
7. Make it mobile-friendly
8. Speed things up

1. Break up text

You’ve got to have text on your website, but the way you go about it can put people off or encourage them to stick around.

There’s nothing that says “don’t read me” like a big block of text.

If you don’t have to say something, don’t. Keep your text to a minimum where appropriate, use shorter paragraphs and break up your content with headings. Try out lists and dot points.

The key is to create scannable content so that your visitors can find what they need, fast.

2. Show, don’t tell

It’s an old cliche, but it still stands. Visual content is much quicker for your website users to absorb than text.

So if you can explain something with an infographic or communicate a message with a photograph – do it.

Think of the visual content and the text working hand in hand. How can you use them both to say things faster and more effectively?

3. Lead your users

Ever heard of choice fatigue? The more choices your website visitors have to make, the less likely they are to stick around.

Instead, you want to make it a breeze for them. Take them by the hand, so to speak, and lead them exactly where you want them to go.

This means reducing the number of items on your menu. It means sticking to standard formats like having your logo in the top left and your menu in the top right.

Don’t go over the top with navigation. Simple and intuitive is best.

4. Consider your colours

It might seem a little basic, but your colour choices can make a big difference to how people perceive your website and your brand.

Yes, your brand. The colours on your website should be consistent with your branding across other platforms. You should choose a colour scheme that reinforces your brand image.

First up, keep it simple. Choose 2-4 on-brand colours and stick with these throughout your entire website.

Secondly, be consistent. Use the same colour for all your CTA buttons, make all your headings one colour, etc.

5. Embrace white space

What are the stars without the black sky as a backdrop? The negative space you leave around your content is massively important.

Don’t overcrowd your website. Leave enough room around each element so that it can breathe. This will make it much easier for users to read and engage with your content.

And while you’re spacing things out, make sure your spacing is consistent. This will help users differentiate between different sections or blocks on your webpage.

6. Aim for familiarity

If you want users to feel at ease on your website, you’ve got to eliminate confusion. One of the best ways to do this is by making things feel familiar.

Whether the user is on your homepage or your about page, they should feel like they’re on the same website. Your branding and messaging should be consistent, but so should things like your call to action and your choice of words.

Consistency is the key to a better user experience and a more solid brand identity. It leaves visitors with a clear and lasting impression of your brand.

7. Make it mobile-friendly

How often do you browse websites on your phone or iPad? If you’re anything like the rest of us, you do it a lot. In fact, some say mobile usage has now surpassed desktop usage.

So what does that mean for your website? It means you’d better optimise for mobile or risk alienating all those mobile users. Ensure your web design looks great and functions well on mobile devices as well as a desktop.

Mobile optimisation is actually a key factor for your search engine rankings too – Google prefers websites that are mobile-friendly.

8. Speed things up

Your design choices can have a huge impact on the load speed of your website. And we know how important it is to have a fast website. People don’t like to wait – you’ve got about 3 seconds to get their attention.

Here are a few ways you can speed things up with design:

• Optimise your images and reduce their file size
• Use browser caching plugins and tools
• Reduce HTTP requests
• Minify your files

Did you know that the speed of your website can affect your Google rankings too?

Good web design is a work in progress

Whether you’re just starting out or have had your website for a while, website design really matters. But it’s not a set-and-forget kind of thing. It’s often an ongoing process of making small improvements.

Being faced with a list of design must-do’s can be overwhelming, but try and see it as a place to start. A checklist that you can work through, making slow and steady progress.

Putting website design principles into practice (even if it’s one at a time) will help you improve user experience, engage with your audience better and maintain a competitive edge.

The post 8 Website Design Practices for 2021 appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

Chances are, you’re on the verge of discovering this for yourself already. You’ve probably already had a client request an infographic to accompany the article you just sent over, or you’re trying to find the right visuals to make your landing page pop.

Unless you’ve got an unlimited budget or some very generous graphic designer friends, you’re probably going to have to figure out how to do this yourself or suffer the consequences (which can include getting paid less or having a second-rate website).

Luckily, some excellent DIY design tools are reasonably priced and easy to use.

In this post, we’ll be comparing two of the best DIY design tools on the market: Canva and Piktochart. Read on to find out which one comes out on top.

Recommended reading: 11 Tips on Finding the Right Infographic Ideas

A Brief Introduction

If you’re looking for a strong DIY design tool choice, then you can’t do much better than Piktochart and Canva, the two market-leading options.

First, meet Canva:

Canva was founded back in 2012 in Sydney, Australia; since then, it has skyrocketed to popularity and is now used by millions of people across the world.

Whether it’s professional designers, online merchants or nonprofits, this web-based graphic design tool is beloved by many for its intuitive use and drag-and-drop functionality.

Probably the most famous name in the market, Canva can be used for both web and print media design. If you want to create attractive visuals and branding for your business, then Canva is worth checking out.

Next up is Piktochart:

Like Canva, Piktochart — founded in 2012 in Malaysia— is a web-based design tool. And like Canva, Piktochart can be used to create stunning visuals to support your brand easily.

However, while Canva markets itself as a broad graphics tool for a range of uses, Piktochart mainly markets itself as a tool for making high-quality infographics without any expert knowledge. It’s easy to see the appeal, particularly for non-professional users.

Getting Started: The Interface

Let’s get started with the very first feature you meet when you use both tools: the interface.

This is where it’s difficult to pick a winner; both Piktochart and Canva have with interface designs that are very easy to use. Although this isn’t too much of a surprise, as both tools are aimed at helping everyone from total newbies to professionals create great designs, it’s a pleasant one.

Both of these DIY design tools offer dashboards that are intuitive and easy-to-use — coming with ready-made templates for the first design that you can either choose and edit or replace with your own.

Piktochart edges towards the finish line with a button that allows you to hide the selector to gain extra space for the canvas.

The Winner: Piktochart — but only just!

Choice and Collection

Piktochart has an impressive library of over 800 professionally designed infographic, presentation, and print templates. Quite simply, there’s no need ever to build anything from scratch when you have this vast variety of designs at your disposal.

However, it’s worth noting that a lot of the high-quality, intricate infographic templates are only available with the paid pricing plan. The free version of Piktochart offers much less in terms of infographic templates — a mere eight options. However, the free tool does provide 4000 free icons and images, which is not bad at all.

Canva also provides some great templates from its professional designers as well as a decent offering of user contributions — and there are thousands of them. Canva also gets major bonus points for including this in its free pricing plan as well.

As with Piktograph, Canva offers access to a rich image library. They’ve paired up with stock site Unsplash, but don’t restrict you to using these images alone — you can either pick your faves from other high-quality stock images sites like Burst or take your product photos and upload them to Canva for editing and branding.

The Winner: Canva trumps Piktograph with its vast range.

Most Extensive Features

So both options have a comprehensive collection of images and templates to choose from. But who comes out on top when it comes to the complicated stuff?

If you’re looking for extensive features, then Piktograph has you covered. This DIY design tool is renowned for its infographic options; in particular, it has video embed capabilities which means it’s perfect for interactive and visually engaging designs.

Piktochart users also love the interactive map and chart builders (in which you can pick a country and break up into regions). And as Piktograph lets you import data and survey results from tools like SurveyMonkey and Google Sheets, you can customize away for stunning data-driven visuals.

Then we come on to Canva. While this DIY design tool is excellent for making infographics, banners, and posters for your ecommerce biz, it has its limits.

Unlike Piktograph, Canva has no video embed capabilities and doesn’t offer animated features or live-data integrations. Unfortunately, this rules out using Canva for anything that’s remotely interactive or that you want to feature real-time data. Instead, you’re limited to static graphics.

The Winner: Piktochart comes out on top in this fight.

Community & Collaboration

Graphic design isn’t always a one-person job. It can involve many different people — others on your team, clients, collaborators… So how easy does each DIY design tool make collaborating with other creators?

Well, you’ll be pleased to know that Canva has many different options for sharing your work and collaborating with others. This is excellent news for all the design newbies looking for some additional help. With Canva’s free version, users can create a team with up to 10 people (with premium users allowed up to 30). You are making it easy enough to share and work on your project as a group.

Canva even has a design school community that users can join. It’s an excellent opportunity to connect with other creators and get feedback and expert options. You can either ask for comments or leave your design open to editing.

Piktograph, on the other hand, prefers to leave its community to grow organically. They’ve created a Piktograph Slack Comunity to house the community and allow users to share ideas and learn from each other.

If you want to collaborate with others on design, then you can choose Piktochart For Teams — a group dashboard in which members can work together to create and edit.

The Winner: Canva for its helpful community vibes.

Price

Canva also offers a free version of its tool. It’s a simple drag and drops editor that includes two folders to organize designs, 1GB storage for photos and assets. Access to over 8,000 templates and the ability to upload your images for editing.

On the other hand, you can upgrade to a Canva for Work pricing place for $12.95 per month (or $9.95 per month for a year’s subscription). For additional access to a whole load of features, including exclusive access to a comprehensive library 400,000 free photos, illustrations, and templates. This paid version allows you to do much more, such as set branded color palettes, upload custom fonts — export designs as animated GIFs or with transparent backgrounds.

As with Canva, Piktograph also offers a freemium version of its product. This version includes an intuitive editor and the ability to create as many visuals as you like. It also provides access 4,000 free icons and images (which is half as many as the free version of Canva offers).

An upgrade to Piktograph PRO will cost you $29 a month (or $24.17 a month if you buy it annually). This gives you access to extra features such as 1GB of image uploads, HD and PDF exports: watermark removal, and custom color schemes.

The Winner: Canva for its excellent pricing.

Conclusion: Who Is the Winner?

In the battle of the DIY design tools, both contestants have a lot going for them. Overall, Canva beats Piktograph when we totted up the scores — but only just!

One thing is for sure: both tools are at the top of the market when it comes to a design tool offerings that are easy-to-use and intuitive for both experts and beginners alike — and that can produce polished professional designs.

And since both DIY design tools offer free options — as well as free trials of their paid versions — why not experiment with both and find out which one suits your needs best?

The post Piktochart VS. Canva: What You Need To Know About These DIY Design Tools appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

The secret is to add timeless trendy design resources to your designs. To help you out today we bring you 10 design resources that will come in handy in creating designs that will excite your clients. The best part is that they are all free!

1. Elegant Print Templates

Use these elegant templates to create eye-grabbing advertising materials to promote your business effectively. These templates are customizable allowing you to build designs that match your unique brand identity.

The templates will give you an opportunity to promote and advertise your brand using traditional but inexpensive designs including flyers, business cards, posters and more.

You can use these templates for commercial and personal use. The templates are available as a fully layered, renamed, grouped PSD file. They are also print ready making your job pretty easy.

Don’t miss out on this awesome deal. Grab the templates for FREE today!

2. 15 Seamless Icon Patterns & Seamless Wood Patterns

Icons are one of the best design resources to create an attention-grabbing website that will excite your web users and get them to explore more of your content.

In this deal, you’ll get 15 icon patterns that you can use to build your website background, headers, buttons, posters or illustrations to give your website a WOW effect.

Adding icons to your website will help break up large blocks of text making your web pages interesting and appealing to read. Icons are also great for communicating an idea in just a matter of seconds as they are easy to understand.

Web icons add a creative and personal touch to your website allowing you to showcase your brand personality.

This bundle of 15 high-quality seamless wood icon patterns comes as a .PAT file and has jpg images of every pattern.

Check out these free patterns here.

3. 10 Colorful Grunge Textures

Make your designs more trendy and dramatic with Grunge textures. These textures will give your designs a more realistic and genuine look. The textures will also give your artwork some texture and depth.

Grunge textures feature designs that give an illusion of torn images, dirty stains, creased pieces of paper and “broken” icons.

These textures are as popular as hand-drawn elements and have a huge interest effect on web users. Grunge textures give you the chance to express your brand personality and voice.

Use these textures for your website background images, web photos, navigation menus or overall layouts.

When using grunge textures set the texture layer to Screen, Soft Light, Multiply or Overlay depending on the kind of look you’re going for.

This bundle of 10 colorful textures can be customized to match your design needs. You can choose to use them as they are and still create winning designs.

All 10 elements are compatible with all major photo editing software that support layers including Photoshop, GIMP, Pixelmator, and others. You can use the texture on both PC and Mac. The textures come in .jpg format.

Get these textures absolutely free now!

4. iPad Air Mockups

This free resource gives you iPad Air Mockups in Photoshop shapes. The mockups come in black and white versions.

Use these mockups for your user interface designs and boost the success of your designs. These mockups are great when you want to give your clients an insight into how your designs work in context without having to show them the complete project.

The mockups come in Photoshop shapes and you can, therefore, resize them without affecting their high quality.

Don’t wait anymore get these mockups free today!

5. 201 Vectors & 30 Patterns

Bring life your website and other designs by adding vectors and patterns. Vectors and patterns make your designs more visually appealing and will hold your customer’s interest every time they see them.

Vectors and patterns are great for website backgrounds. You want your web visitor to be fully captured immediately they visit your website. The background is one of the first things that web users see when they land on your website so you want them to see something powerful.

This bundle comes with 96 vector silhouettes, 40 small vector icons, 65 tiny icons and 30 Photoshop pixel patterns.

All these resources are professionally designed, are customizable and will be useful for various design purposes.

Grab this deal absolutely FREE!

6. Heraldry Vector Images

Heraldry vector images will make your designs more elegant and visually appealing to your customers. This bundle includes 24 vector images featuring banners, wreaths, swords, dragons, crowns and more.

These vectors will let you add some fun and drama to your designs because they are impactful and self-explanatory. There is no better way to express your brand personality than with vector images.

• Vector images are awesome for designers as they are easy to stretch and resize without losing their quality. You can use them anywhere and on any device.
• Are the best type of images to use in your design resources today because they will still be responsive and scalable for various screen sizes.
• SEO friendly. SEO is one of the most important aspects of a website that every designer should consider when creating websites. So any way you can boost your site’s SEO performance, go for it!

This bundle is available as an instant download. The vectors are in .AI/.EPS/.JPG/.PDF formats.

Grab this deal for FREE now!

7. 48 Free Social Media Icons

Social media integration is now a popular and efficient way of marketing your products and services. People will generally want to share something they love with their friends and family on their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts. This gives brands an opportunity to generate a lot of online exposure.

Making it easy for your web users to share your web content on social media is very important. The easiest way to do this is by adding social media icons on your website.

For maximum success take advantage of this super cool free kit of 48 frequently used social media icons. These perky yet smart icons are guaranteed attention grabbers.

These icons are professionally designed to give an artistic and classy feel. They come in vibrant colors and are compatible with both light and dark backgrounds making them easy to see. They are available as an instant download, are super easy to install and use.

Get these 48 social media icons FREE today!

8. 3D App Mockup

Do you have an awesome app idea that you want to pitch to your clients? Bring your idea to life with this perfect app mockup.

Don’t struggle anymore with explaining how your app will work instead create a mockup to help clients visualize your app without having to create the complete application.

Mockups are great because they allow you to showcase your app’s appearance, its basic functionality and the visual details including colors, typography, etc.

This 3D App mockup is highly realistic, comes in a simple and clean design and gives a 3D view. By viewing you app mockup, your clients will have a pretty good idea of how the final app will look like and it will function.

Grab this mockup free now and start creating high-profile visual design drafts for your clients!

9. Passion Portfolio WordPress Theme

It’s important that as a designer you have an online portfolio to showcase your work and give potential clients an idea of what you’re capable of.

An online portfolio is an extension of your resume and gives you the opportunity to convey your personal brand identity.

With an impressive online portfolio, you’re able to reach a wider audience and offers interested clients a way to reach you.

Grab this WordPress theme that is perfect for artistic creatives including photographers, designers, and artists who want to create a great first impression.

This theme gives you an awesome opportunity to showcase your skills and artwork in the most creative and impressive manner.

The theme has a minimal design, unique sliding portfolio, a homepage slideshow and unlimited portfolio galleries. It also supports mouse wheel scroll.

The theme is easy to install and use. Simply use the drag and drop feature to add your logo and contact details.

You can add as many galleries and pages to your portfolio. Web visitors can easily scroll through your portfolio using the mouse wheel and click on an image for a bigger view.

The theme offers you three custom post types to choose from. These are Portfolio, News, and Slideshow. The theme also comes with Ajax contact form so that you can give clients an easy way to contact you immediately.

Download this theme for free now!

10. 100 high-resolution Vector Icons

You want your designs to be effective communication machines that convey your messages in the most efficient manner.

For this to happen, you have to get your visitors hooked immediately they view your designs otherwise they won’t give your designs a second glance.

To get this effect, ass high-resolution vector icons to your website. These icons will help your web users to easily navigate your website without losing interest.

This bundle comes with a whopping 100 free icons that you can choose from no matter what your web design needs are, you will find the perfect icons to use in this bundle.

Don’t let your web visitors struggle to find your content instead, give them an awesome way to get around and stay on your site for long with these icons.

Download this amazing pack for FREE!

In Conclusion

There are hundreds of free design resources that you can use to create visually appealing and exciting designs that will have your customers hooked and interested in what you’re offering them.

Take advantage of these 10 top design resources to increase the effectiveness of your designs. Remember, they are all FREE!

The post 10 MUST Have Design Resources for Web Designers appeared first on WP Pluginsify.