WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems available for web designers today. Its usefulness far outweighs much of the public criticism it often receives – due to the fact that most users don’t dive into the depths of the system itself. Here are some of the key benefits of WordPress that showcase how powerful the CMS is.

Quick Setup and Easy to Learn

WordPress is a platform that is designed for users that don’t want to jump through hoops when it comes to updating their site. It has a very short learning curve, simple to update, and is extremely user-friendly. Now, the benefit of having an easy to use CMS is that any user in your organization update the website with ease. By utilizing WordPress, you don’t need to wait for your specialists to submit every single website change to the IT department or developers and patiently wait for them to implement it. Rather, you can simply log into your account, make the update, and watch it go live in seconds.

Versatility

The plethora of WordPress plugins extends the already vast capabilities that the system has to offer. Whatever tools your business needs for your website, there’s probably one already made that can be easily downloaded and installed onto your WordPress website. These plugins are designed to create a seamless experience for managing and updating your business site without the stress of doing so.

A Secure Platform

One of the vastly underrated aspects of WordPress is the active community surrounding it. This large developer and support community has created numerous plugins to help sites as well as set up forums to discuss and manage issues. Needless to say, you’ll have all the support you’ll need to update your WordPress site without any issues. Furthermore, WordPress is built as a secure system that releases updates regularly to ensure that all sites remain secure. Users will receive notifications of the required updates – which are as easy as a click of a button.

SEO Benefits

WordPress is not only a user-friendly platform, but it’s also great for improving your SEO. The coding and mark-up utilized to create WordPress websites follows the best practices, which makes it extremely attractive to the search engines. Additionally, there are various plugins that can be easily integrated into a WordPress site to manage your SEO data. There are even plugins that will provide instant audits of your WordPress page and display the number of issues along with a solution on how you can fix it. WordPress, in general, is easy to use for everyone, not just developers or professional web designers. It provides a wide range of tools and options, has a vast and helpful community, and does justice when it comes to improving your presence on the search engines.

The number of web design companies has been drastically increasing over the past years. Why? It’s simple really. Creating a website leads to a more profitable business endeavor. However, before you take the leap on a company that you’ve never heard of but are flaunting their technical skills on you, read this article to discover how you can narrow out the “good” from the “great”.

Know What You Want Specifically Done

Knowing the exact services you need for your website can help you save both time and money. Instead of taking the premium package that covers every aspect of your website, find a company that’s willing to offer you the design services that you need – nothing more, nothing less. This way, you’ll likely pay less than the usual going rate for a package deal, and you’ll get the design aspects that your website requires.

“Aged” Companies are Gold

Many web design companies or firms that are newly created lack the appropriate experience. Now, this doesn’t apply to every new business but most of them out there haven’t taken the right amount of time to refine their skills throughout the years – as opposed to seasoned companies. If the aforementioned companies’ services weren’t satisfactory, they wouldn’t be around for this long of time.

Customer Support is More Important than You Think

Now, the web design company is tasked with performing numerous tasks for your website. However, it’s not enough that your site is up and running. There have been cases where developers are missing in action after creating the website leaving owners with an incomplete project. You’ll want to make sure that the company that you’re going with has a 24/7 customer service support line, or something equivalent, so you can maintain constant communication with the team that’s building your site. For instance, if you see something that you don’t like, you can easily contact the specialists and inform them you require changes.

Quality of Service

It’s crucial that you get more of what you pay for or value for the money. It isn’t enough that the service is affordable. Rather, it should also be quality at the same time. Quality of service should be impactful on whether you should pursue the deal or not. Keep in mind that many companies will often jack up the prices on a service that takes 10 to 15 minutes to perform, but mask this behind a wall of technical jargon to eliminate the obvious. Perform some research beforehand on the type of services that you’re looking to obtain for your site. Once you get a solid understanding, you’ll be able to differentiate the crooks from the honest. You wouldn’t believe how many web design companies are asking for thousands of dollars just to implement an all-in-one template into your website. It’s flat-out ridiculous.

For most companies, having a noticeable logo is what makes their brand stand out from the competition. A symbolic design is essential to associate one’s brand with their customer base – i.e. Starbucks, Nike, etc. These 5 tips are designed to assist you in your branding strategy.

Don’t Overcomplicate the Design

While you might want be thinking that flashy elements and complex shapes will make the customer “ooh” and “ahh” there way into your store, it’s actually quite the opposite. Having too much for the eye to focus on makes it much more difficult for the customer to recognize it in the future.

Simplicity is the way to go. Ideally, the objective of your logo itself is to serve as a representation of your brand. By adding odd lines and a variety of color patterns, you’ll only take away from that strategy.

Utilize a clean design and make your logo visually appealing. Ensure that your logo appears with a duo-tone (black on a white background).

Visibility

Always remember that while the logo might look amazing on a business card, will the same success translate to a billboard or a smartphone app? Whenever you’re designing a logo you have to think about where you’re going to place your logo and consider how it’s going to look. Now, since the transition to apps has come faster than most people expected, you’ll likely have to focus on how the logo is going to appear on an app icon and on a somewhat small screen – depending on if you’re planning on creating an app.

The Best Logos Don’t Last Forever

Always stay up-to-date with your logo design. It’s important to consider tweaking your logo to ensure that it stays current. However, if you’ve had previous success with your logo, you might not want to conduct a significant shift in design. Rather, a simple change or a small tweak could do wonders to make it more fitting with the times.

Take a look around, logos are constantly being updated to showcase their presence. Everything from major hotel chains to NBA teams, no holds barred. They’re all looking to evoke a new and “fresh” feel to their logo that rejuvenates their presence in the market.

Consider Longevity

When you’re looking to change, or update, your logo, always avoid popular trends. Because, as you already know, these trends tend to fade away over time. Often times companies will select a design that is current with the times but more relevant to a fad. This is a costly mistake as it’s not likely to stay current and it might not even fit with the brand’s theme and values. A modern look never fails to catch one’s attention but the moral of the story is avoid designs and elements that are the trend of the year – they never have a happy ending.

Always Consider Recognition

It’s essential that you always take the necessary steps to ensure that you creating a design that has the potential to drive business and bring in customers. To do this, you’ll want to understand your business’s primary objective and perhaps incorporate that into your design. By doing this, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how the logo itself associates with your brand’s core values. This way, when a customer reads your mission and takes a look at your logo, they’ll understand the embodiment that your logo takes after. This is a powerful message that resonates with the customer, perhaps for life.

Your website is the first glimpse a potential customer will get of your business, your offerings and what you can do for them. Is your website looking like something out of the AOL era? If you’re stuck on Web 1.0, you might be missing out on customers who are surfing on their mobile devices, customers searching for you in the search engine, and even those who know your Web address but leave because the page takes too long to load. These tips will help you revitalize your website and build something you and your employees can be proud of.

Large Images and Sliders
One of the most effective methods to sell your product is with visuals, and many businesses are using a prominent image on the front page to do just that. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see the top half of the page (known as the area “above the fold”) slide dynamically to reveal another picture. This George Lucas-style cutting technique is easy with a bit of javascript.

Simplify Your Navigation
Customers come to your site and they want to find what they are looking for immediately. Unless they really want something, they aren’t going to spend a lot of time searching your website when they can find their item easily someplace else. The solution? Reduce your top menu navigation to no more than ten items. Doing so will keep your customers focused on finding the items they want to buy quickly.

Backgrounds
Using a white background is probably the most effective method to display important information. You might feel tempted to use a background image, or even gradients. Those won’t work for a few reasons. First and foremost: images take time to load so you’re reducing your page speed. Secondly, gradients obscure text, making it difficult to see what your key offers are.

Color Coding
Try to pick a three-color scheme that will fit your website, but definitely use no more than four colors total on your page. More than four and your text might prove unreadable, or your site might become an ugly mishmash of colors. Too much color can ruin your work faster than poor copy or forgetting the call to action.

Banner Ads
The final note is about ads. People don’t like them, so it’s a good idea to avoid placing them on your website unless you absolutely need to do so. Most websites that are not blogs will be fine to skip the ads. Ads also make your site look cheap, because the assumption is your products don’t sell and you need ads to cover the revenue. Unless the ad is crucial to your operations, think twice before you place it.