How to Improve Your Web Design Skills

Do you want to become a more accomplished web designer? Professional web designers are in high demand and most of these professionals make a good living from the skills and knowledge they have obtained. If you want to become an established web designer too, there are many ways you can achieve this goal such as the steps mentioned below.

Complete a Recognized Course

Online Resources To Advance Your Web Design Career

To reach your full potential as a web designer, you really need to have a recognized technical qualification such as the masters in software development. An MSSD online program includes all the fundamentals and skills you will need when you decide to join the workforce. These courses are developed by a range of different IT and online professionals, so you will be able to tap into their knowledge and become a much more effective web designer.

Online Research

Tech Tools Every Web Designer Needs

The internet contains millions of web pages that are dedicated to web design and the great thing is most of this information is free to access over the internet. Video sharing websites, blogs, forums and other online outlets all contain tutorials, tests, and other information that will expand your knowledge and allow you to refer back to this information anytime.

Become an Intern in a Web Design Agency

13 Quick Tips to Improve Your Web Design Skills

To really get some hands-on experience in web design and find out how the professionals work in web design, you should consider becoming an intern in a local web design agency. You may not get paid very much while you're an intern, but the knowledge and skills you develop will be invaluable and can be put to good use if you decide to further your career in this area.

Practice

Why 75% of Web Designers Fail Miserably And What To Do About It

Practice makes perfect and this is definitely true when it comes to web design. You have to roll up your sleeves and create a few websites of your own. Alternatively, you could offer to create a website for a local organization or a family member or friend for free. This will help you to improve your skills and you will also be able to get some feedback from the person or organization you are helping out.

Online Courses and Mentoring

The 15 Best Web Design eBooks of 2015

With so many online resources available, it can become overwhelming and you have the potential to lose focus. However, there are many web design professionals online who are willing to help you. Some will provide step-by-step online courses that show you all the tricks of the trade.

In other situations, web design experts provide mentoring services and are able to help you with web design and other online activities. Taking this approach will save you a lot of time and ensure that you only focus on tasks and actions that will improve your web design abilities.

As you can see, there are many ways you can develop your web design skills. More resources than ever are available to educate you and there are experts and businesses that are willing to help you increase your knowledge and improve your skills too.

Source: How to Improve Your Web Design Skills

The 6 Reasons You Should Choose WordPress for Your Website

There are a number of solutions available for creating websites, each with their own advantages, disadvantages and fanatical user bases championing each of them. This means finding the solution to publish your content could be tough. Make the wrong choice and you're potentially stuck with a platform that causes you headaches and grief further down the line.

Fortunately, there's a publishing platform available with the right balance of functionality, flexibility, cost, and support to match hand-coded websites and it also outperforms the other available solutions. That platform, of course, is WordPress!

In this post, we will look at six reasons why WordPress should be the go-to publishing choice for your website, but first of all, let's look at exactly what WordPress is, along with a little back history.

What Is WordPress?

Put simply, WordPress is a platform for publishing self-hosted websites. Its interface is accessed through your web browser and other than using a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client for the initial install, WordPress offers you everything you need to publish your content. In fact, if you choose the right host, you wouldn't even need an FTP client.

WordPress was first launched in 2003 by two developers who wanted a better solution for publishing their blog content (Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little). 13 years later, WordPress has now grown to power over 25% of the internet – with high-profile users such as TechCrunch, the Washington Post, and BBC America, to name a few.

Its humble beginnings solely as a blogging platform are still present, but constant development has meant WordPress has evolved into a full-featured Content Management System (CMS). With developments such as the incoming REST API on the horizon, WordPress looks to become even more dominant in the future.

Now we've briefly looked at its history, let's take a deeper look at some of the reasons you should choose WordPress as your publishing platform.

1. WordPress Is Open-Source and Free Forever

You may have heard the term 'open-source software' bandied around, but might not know what it means. Quite simply, open-source means anybody can contribute to the software in question, with all of the source code freely available to download and modify. In a lot of cases, open-source software is free to use. You may already be using open-source software without realizing it, such as the VLC media player, or the Firefox browser:

An important aspect of WordPress' freedom is its protection under what's known as the GNU General Public Licence (GPL). This licence lets anybody use, share and modify the software. Also, in contrast to a standard copyright, any derived works must also be released under the GPL. What this means is WordPress is free, and will be freely available forever.

While WordPress is highly unlikely to be unsupported in the future (WordPress' parent company Automattic was recently valued at $1–2 Billion, and the CMS is the cornerstone of their business), its open-source nature means other developers are free to take over the project if development is halted. Plus, because of the GPL, they too would have to make their work freely available.

2. You Don't Have to Be a Web Developer

There are a multitude of ways in which WordPress' design makes it easy to create pages and content, all without requiring any coding experience. In WordPress, each page or post is created using the open-source TinyMCE editor. This gives WordPress the functionality of software like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, meaning styling your text with bold or italics, for example, can be done directly within the editor:

Media can be embedded in a couple of ways. The Media Library enables you to add images using the Add Media button and can be resized directly within WordPress, so there's no need for external programs such as Photoshop. 'Under the hood' functionality also enables you to embed video from the likes of YouTube and Vimeo:

There are many more examples of WordPress' ease of use, such as the infamous five-minute install procedure, automatic updates and its myriad of social sharing and user interaction settings, among others, the content editing options are just the tip of the iceberg.

3. Designing Your Site Requires No Coding Skills

Your website's overall design and layout doesn't require the knowledge of your garden variety web developer either. For a start, WordPress includes several default themes designed to show off its core functionality. While these themes perform admirably, there are thousands of other themes to choose from, all completely free, within the WordPress Theme Directory.

Because they're free, you'll find that the quality of themes varies. However, the Theme Directory includes a five-star rating system, awarded by users, to help you make an informed choice.

There are also some developers who offer premium themes (i.e. ones with a cost attached) with a generally more committed development program and dedicated support. ThemeForest is by far the largest site for purchasing premium themes and markets our very own Avada – which is currently the number one selling theme:

4. If You Need Extra Functionality, There's a Plugin For That

The basic functionality of WordPress is very good and may be just what you're looking for, but it doesn't cover every need and want out of the box. You may need additional functionality and in WordPress this is provided by small add-ons called plugins:

There are thousands of plugins available for free within the WordPress Plugin Repository, each providing different additional functionality. In some cases, such as Super Cache and Yoast SEO, free plugins found here can be practically essential.

Similarly to themes, the premium plugin market is rich, with sites such as CodeCanyon offering thousands of plugins for purchase. Again, like premium themes, you'll often find more committed development and dedicated support when compared to free options.

5. WordPress Has a Large, Strong Community

A major benefit of using WordPress is its strong, passionate, and inclusive community. The WordPress.org website has its own forums, where users share advice and ask for help on a regular basis. If you have a question to ask, this is the place to do it! Many plugin and theme developers have support forums here for their free offerings too, so support is always at hand and you'll more often than not, be talking directly to the developers themselves:

Finally, as WordPress has grown, so has its developer base. The platform attracts contributors from all manner of other fields and industries, who pool their talents to make WordPress better. Updates to WordPress itself are frequent, with a team of hundreds releasing three core updates per year.

6. E-Commerce Is Easy With WordPress

Unlike a hand-coded website, setting up an e-commerce solution on your WordPress website is easy when using one of a number of available plugins.

One such example is WooCommerce – currently the most popular e-commerce solution available and integrated with Avada. Its strengths lie in how fast it is to set up a store and its support from all major payment providers.

You're not restricted to just WooCommerce though. There are other solutions available, such as Easy Digital Downloads (specializing in digital only products), and Shopify as an alternative to both.

Finally, while it's not a WordPress-specific solution, by adding an open-source SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt, you could potentially build an online store with WordPress, Avada, WooCommerce, and Let's Encrypt for very little outlay.

Next Steps

At this point, you're probably on-board with the idea of using WordPress as the platform for publishing your website. If you're itching to get started, here's what to do next:

Find a suitable web host for your website that ideally offers one-click WordPress install.

Look for a theme that can help you create an amazing websites with advanced options that require no coding, is constantly updated and provides 5 star customer support, such as Avada.

Browse the WordPress.org Plugin Directory to see the scope of what plugins are available for download.

Conclusion

Choosing a publishing platform for your website can be tough and choosing the wrong one means wasting time and money later, when migrating to a more suitable solution. WordPress should be your first choice for publishing your website. In this post we looked at some of the reasons why. Let's recap:

WordPress will be free forever.

Using WordPress is as easy as using your favorite word processor.

There are many free themes and very feature rich premium themes such as Avada.

You don't have to know code in order to design and manage your site.

WordPress can be extended with plugins to provide extra functionality.

A large, strong community means you'll never be without answers if you're struggling.

Selling products is easy, with several e-commerce solutions available to get started instantly.

What are you looking for in a WordPress website and what might be holding you back? Let us know in the comments section below!

Image credit: 9355, magicaltar0, WordPress.org.

Source: The 6 Reasons You Should Choose WordPress for Your Website

How to become a professional web designer without a degree?

Coding

Published on May 28th, 2017 | by Guest

If you're interested in programming and you have interest and some good skills for visual design, they surely you may want to know pursue about getting a Web design degree or people would give you suggestions regarding this.

But, the truth is, you don't need a degree to learn Web programming or Web designing actually or to get started in the industry of professional web design services, but a degree will really help you to get hired by the companies that employ a staff of developers and designers to work on internal projects.

Similarly, if you won't be thinking to start your journey towards getting a degree, then maybe you will be really interested in starting your career as a freelance web designer for different website design companies.

Initially, you will face many difficulties because you will have no connections, PR or an appropriate professional experience in the industry but by the time you would only feel that you have one simple technique to fetch some projects.

This technique is bidding on different freelance web design and development services board like Up work, Freelancer, Fiverr, etc.

But the bad part is that these hourly or project based jobs pays little and if your only chance of full time income is this then it is not the good option to have.

It's quite possible that it would really help you to build a successful career as a freelance Web developer, but it's best to start out with an industry job to meet contacts and learn how a professional website services business operates.

There is a reason for you to have by needing contacts and experience is that because you will have to approach corporate clients and pitch your services to them in order to make at least an average income in this field as a freelancer because only freelancing with these sites will help you only to make peanuts and nothing more than that.

You'll have to show them your portfolio as a web page designer and explain to them why you're qualified to do the job.

Every time you approach a new client, it will be like another job interview.

When you have several clients convinced of your abilities, you'll get the repeated business, and then you can quit your day job and work freelance full-time.

You won't have to then worry about advertising or marketing tactics then.

You will need a degree to get a job with a company in the first place, and your education will prepare you for all of these career steps.

Below we are discussing some of the main points which would help and guide us to become a web developer or a professional website designer without having a college degree.

2-year certificate program or a 4-year bachelor's degree in order to be a professional website designer

A professional website designer certificate or an associate degree program is a two-year program offered by most of the community colleges and similarly, four-year program of bachelor's in similar discipline is offered at the universities.

If you pursue the college degree instead of a university one then usually the coursework focuses on basic high-level programming, visual design, and business.

If you already have some programming knowledge, you can probably teach yourself all the Python, JavaScript, HTML and other languages you need to have professional-level coding skills in a few months.

Python, PHP, and JavaScript are the most favorite ones these days for you start doing affordable professional website design services.

How can you earn besides getting professional website designing skills yourself?

Similarly, if you can't leave you day job then surely you can start bidding on different freelance professional website services jobs which are from Up work or Freelancer in your spare time.

Initially, it won't help you to make more money but as soon as your qualification, experience and portfolio would increase then eventually your rate per hour and project earnings would also increase.

If you have a steady source of income to live on while you get established on freelance job boards, you can eventually gain enough experience and a different number of clients to pitch your services to higher-paying clients and quit your day job like make yourself specialized in the area of offering affordable custom website design making.

This can be your long-term strategies which will you to attain success for longer term. Similarly, when you will get enough hands-on experience then it won't matter if you will not be having a degree.

Sooner or later you will the good clients who will return to you for future work.

You just have to aggressive and very sharp-minded, without this consistency you won't sustain in a fast pace world of development.

Which field is better Programming or designing?

The field of computer programming is one of the best skills to have in today's job market and era and then earn associate's degree or a diploma certificate in Web designing field which is one of the best degrees for the money.

If you want to ensure that you have professional skills and amazing opportunities to earn really well then you may want to consider getting the same.

But what if you keep getting a different degree and certificate about website design and development and won't do the live available projects.

As the famous phrase says, 'Practice makes a man perfect' so it is all about your creativity and imagination to become a successful web designer and developer rather going to a degree college.

One of the best resources to start with for professional web design services…

W3schools.com is one of the best resources out there to learn the basics and advanced versions of web design and development services.

It has a step-by-step instruction design where you can run the live code in order to check your mistakes and your error will be rectified instantly in front of you then so you can attain a high-quality web design.

Similarly, you can also take some help from the local library or different e-libraries where there are several online books and resources from where you can start practicing. These all books are really good and have extra learning resources with them already so, you don't have to earn a separate bachelor's degree in order to learn and study them.

It will really help you pass the theoretical test and interview of a professional website design company.

Similarly, after coding on some of these online editors you can get licensed software of Adobe Dreamweaver and then start you dream journey of coding different possible solutions into reality being a web page designer.

There are different thousands of YouTube and online tutorials in order to get started with Adobe Dreamweaver.

It will really help to start designing the websites successfully.

You will be able to learn and master the language of designing and building different websites.

This path will be started with HTML, proceeding towards CSS and XML, etc.

It will be an exciting journey which you will love. Each day will be a different experience.

Start freelancing successfully by offering affordable website design services

Here are some tips when you are going to starting out your career as a freelance professional website developer, the one who works for different website design companies and organizations.

Firstly, you would have to ask your client what they want or they expect from you.

How do they see their future site or a renovated website?

Is there any specific look-alike site which matches their imagination?

If there is any, then your game would be much easier.

Have a mind map of what the website would look like and then write it on a piece of paper.

Make small notes and highlight the most important point and then jot them together somewhere.

This Pre-design planning saves your precious time, money and resources.

It would help you to invest more time into your core designing and coding rather than keep thinking of how to get along with the next step.

Similarly, design an up-to-date and an excellent portfolio of your high-quality website design services because it is crucial for any web developer's success.

Mostly web designer's face unique challenges according to different circumstances: like you and your work need to stay up to date and current because the world is moving really fast. The more you will show your skills and aesthetic side to the world.

Author Bio:

Saim Khan is an SEO Analyst having more than 5 years of professional expertise in search engine optimization, and as a content writer. Right now he is working with Nexstair technologies a professional web design and development company. You can follow him on Facebook & Twitter.

Tags: become, professional, web designer

About the Author

Guest Contribution of guest authors towards Techno FAQ blog

Source: How to become a professional web designer without a degree?

Object of Desire: Blackmagic Design Web Presenter

Thanks to Facebook and YouTube, we're all broadcasters now. But livestreaming through a smartphone is a poor substitute for capturing video with a higher-end camera. That's where Blackmagic's Web Presenter comes in. Connect it to your camera via HDMI or SDI cable and then connect it to a PC via USB, and you can create your own web streaming studio using your DSLR, mirrorless or cinema camera. The Presenter doesn't need a special driver, it's simply treated like a webcam by your computer so its video feed can be easily integrated into the full range of livestreaming options (YouTube and Facebook Live, Twitch, etc.). The Presenter automatically converts your live video recordings, even 4K resolution streams, to a 720p stream that's broadcast-able through your computer. The unit's software monitors available bandwidth and will reduce frame rates automatically if bandwidth decreases. The Presenter has SDI and HDMI outputs as well so you can feed live video to an external monitor or recorder to save for the future. There's an XLR input and stereo inputs for connecting external mics. If you spring for the optional Teranex Mini Smart Panel you can switch between two live video inputs for an extra sheen of professionalism.

PRICE: starting at $495INFO: www.blackmagicdesign.com

Related Articles:

What Video Pros Need To Know About Livestreaming

Object of Desire: Livestream Broadcaster

Source: Object of Desire: Blackmagic Design Web Presenter

Free 3D factory layout software for the designers of tomorrow

The MPDS4 3D Factory Layout Software is available free of charge for students May 25, 2017 -- DMN Newswire--2017-5-25--

Cambridge, UK and Pittsford, NY - 17 May 2017:

 

Lecturers and students benefit from a multi-user 3D factory engineering suite that is easy to administer and provides integrated 2D drafting software, as well as extensible catalogues of 3D components for all major design disciplines.

 

Factory Layout Engineering Software - Free Educational Use

 

'CAD Schroer's MPDS4 factory layout suite is free for schools and colleges, universities and publicly funded research establishments that want to use the software as part of their curriculum or on specific projects,' says Sergej Schachow of CAD Schroer. 'MPDS4 is modular, flexible, powerful, and multi-user ready, but nevertheless easier to install, and administrate, than most of the large-scale plant design systems on the market. The software can be run on a standard laptop with a discrete 3D graphics card, making it ideal for the academic purposes.'

 

Extensible catalogues and 3D Walk-Through Reviews

 

The engineering suite includes extensible catalogues for factory and conveyor design, piping, steelwork, HVAC and electrical routing. Students can design their own parametric 3D catalogue components, and create walk-through paths directly in the design environment. Designs can be exported to a lightweight 3D format, allowing students to e-mail them to their lecturer for review using the external MPDS4 VIEW software.

 

Quick introduction with video tutorials and documentation

 

MPDS4 is available as a free trial version from CAD Schroer's website. A free student or educational license can also be requested directly from the manufacturer. After receiving the license, the software can then be used by teachers and students for educational or research purposes. Updates are provided via CAD Schroer's website and a new student license can be requested at any time.

 

Overview and Download of the 3D Factory Planning Software MPDS4

 

Apply for a free student, educational or research license

 

 

About CAD Schroer

 

CAD Schroer is a global software development company and engineering solutions provider, helping to raise the productivity and competitiveness of customers working in manufacturing and plant design, including the automotive sector and its supply chain, the energy sector and public utilities. CAD Schroer has offices and subsidiaries throughout Europe and in the United States.

 

CAD Schroer's product portfolio includes 2D/3D CAD, plant design, factory layout and data management solutions. Customers in 39 countries rely on MEDUSA4®, MPDS4�?� and STHENO/PRO® to provide an efficient, flexible and integrated design environment for all phases of product or plant design ' cutting costs while raising quality. CAD Schroer emphasizes close customer partnerships and supports its clients' objectives through extensive consultancy, training, development, support and maintenance services.

 

Related Keywords:Free, factory layout, software, student version

Source:Digital Media Online. All Rights Reserved

Source: Free 3D factory layout software for the designers of tomorrow

Solodev Offers Digital Advertising Agencies the Next Evolution in Website Content Management, the Web Experience Platform

Company's innovative solution simplifies website development and promotes a unique web experience at an attainable price point

ORLANDO, FL--(Marketwired - May 24, 2017) -  Solodev announces today its Web Experience Platform as the next evolution in web content management software (WCMS) for digital advertising agencies, web designers and web development professionals. Prior to the release of the Solodev Web Experience Platform, digital creatives relied on traditional WCMS platforms, which limited them in terms of design freedom, scalability and security. With Solodev, users can create without limitations, master digital marketing across online channels, and build expansive and engaging websites with minimal code, thus empowering digital professionals with the specific tools necessary to deliver unique web experiences to every individual consumer.

"Today's consumers expect a personalized web experience that caters to their unique needs. Existing WCMS offerings are either too limited to meet these needs or so expensive that they eat up too much of the creative budget," said Shawn Moore, CTO at Solodev. "By utilizing Solodev's unique approach to web design and development, digital agencies and creatives are given the tools to facilitate an authentic interaction between their clients' brands and website visitors -- all while saving money for other initiatives. We're leveling the playing field so creative minds have access to the same level of technology once reserved for Fortune 500 companies."

Solodev's platform allows creatives to bring their ideas to life, from web content management to the customer experience. Not only intended to enhance the front-end of the web experience, Solodev also eases back-end challenges of website design, development and management. Examples include the ability to rapidly build websites with minimal code by creating core layouts that can be turned into re-usable templates. Additionally, Solodev's multi-site capabilities allow digital professionals to easily switch between projects without opening a new tab or logging in again. Further, they can stage their changes and set workflows for clients to approve before their work is pushed to production.

"With features like A/B testing, staging, content scheduling and real-time analytics, Solodev enables ad agencies to operate without compromising creativity for functionality," adds Moore. "Solodev is also completely architected for the most trusted name in cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our platform leverages the entire AWS product suite to ensure the highest levels of scalability, availability, redundancy and security for users."

The Solodev Web Experience platform can be deployed on-demand, via Solodev's website or directly through the AWS Marketplace. This allows ad agencies and creatives to purchase the platform and start utilizing it within minutes rather than days or months, thus avoiding the headaches usually associated with the onboarding of new software technologies. For web design agencies and professionals currently managing multiple websites, existing designs can easily be imported into Solodev without any downtime.

For a limited time, Solodev is offering digital professionals a complimentary 14-day trial of its web experience platform. For more information, visit www.solodev.com.

Source: Solodev Offers Digital Advertising Agencies the Next Evolution in Website Content Management, the Web Experience Platform

Sayspring raises $1.5M for software that lets designers prototype and test voice apps without coding

Sayspring, a startup that enables designers to create voice-enabled apps without code ahead of handing over projects to development, has just raised $1.5 million in funding for its efforts, the company is announcing today. The round was led by Compound (formerly Metamorphic Ventures), with participation from strategic angels including Scott Belsky, Alan Chung, and Peter Stern.

The startup is filling a gaping void in the still nascent world of voice computing.

While visual designers today use software to create and visualize their applications ahead of launch, as well as to create prototypes, and run user tests, those tasked with building voice applications don't have similar resources. Instead, voice apps have to be first coded by developers, and generally end up being tested in the wild in the hands of end users who enable the voice application on their Alexa-powered speakers, like the Echo, or Google Home.

The end result is that many of today's voice applications have effectively been created by developers, not designers – and they have the feel of those who have approached the project with an engineering-first mindset, rather than a fuller understanding of what a voice app's interface, interactions, and overall flow should be like in order to better engage the app's users.

This is a problem that Sayspring now aims to address.

The idea for the startup comes from founder Mark Webster, who previously sold his prior company, a marketplace for activities called SideTour to Groupon, where he worked for a couple of years before leaving to create Sayspring.

He had realized the potential in voice computing, but also saw the issues with the way voice apps were being built today – that is, they were often lacking designers' input ahead of their creation.

"Almost every company already does voice design, they just call it training. Salespeople, customer service representatives, retail workers, and nearly everyone who interacts with a customer is trained on how to figure out what a customer needs, how to be helpful, and how to represent their company well," explains Webster.

"As voice assistants become pervasive, companies will now need to make sure those voice experiences are effective and enjoyable as well," he adds. "That starts with the voice design process."

With Sayspring, Webster says the goal is to bring designers into the larger process of creating voice applications – something he feels is necessary for voice apps to reach their potential.

To fulfill this vision, Webster is joined by CTO Scott Werner – the second engineering hire at SideTour who later worked alongside Webster at Groupon to lead engineering.

The team recently participated in the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, a program in New York where Sayspring is based. ERA also participated in Sayspring's funding through its follow-on fund, notes Webster.

To get started with the platform, non-technical users can sign up for a free account and create a project. This involves mapping out some user commands the voice assistant would recognize and respond to in the voice app. These projects can then be tested using a Sayspring Alexa Skill or Google Home Action. These tools basically offer a way for designers to try out a prototype of their voice application before sending it over to developers to code.

For example, you could launch your project's prototype on an Alexa device by saying "Alexa, ask Sayspring for {ProjectName}."

You can then interact with the voice app in a natural way – just as users would – by talking with either Alexa or Google Assistant. The platform has also integrated Amazon Polly (text-to-speech) so designers can preview their text and hear it how sounds, as they are working.

In addition to allowing designers to create a visualization of their projects and a way to try them out, Sayspring also allows the projects to be shared with anyone. After doing so, they'll receive a transcript every time an end user speaks to the app. This allows for rapid iteration on the app's design – again, ahead of investing the time and resources into development, explains Webster.

Sayspring launched with a free plan in December, and will introduce paid plans for agencies and teams a couple of months as it pursues its software-as-a-service business model.

The startup already has dozens of companies using its service, including one of the largest mutual funds in the country, a well-known branding agency, major tech firms, publishing companies, digital agencies, event ticketing providers, hospitals, financial services firms, and even a power tools manufacturer and a popular chain of breakfast places. (Webster is not allowed to disclose Sayspring's customers by name at this time.)

In addition to making the design and development process easier, Sayspring has the related benefit of allowing larger companies to design their voice apps for multiple platforms at once. For now, that includes Amazon Alexa-powered devices and Google Home. However, the company recently finished the technical work for supporting Cortana, and plans to roll that out to customers in about a month.

Source: Sayspring raises $1.5M for software that lets designers prototype and test voice apps without coding

How to start a web design business so you set yourself up for success [worksheet]

If you've set your sights on how to start a web design business, get ready for a wild ride. The journey of a freelance website designer is often like a turbulent, yet exciting, roller coaster ride. From a state of confusion to a sense of accomplishment, from exhaustion to exhilaration, with detours along the way for sanity checks, strategy resets and supporter shoutouts. But if you do it right, all those banked turns and barrel rolls can lead to a successful career as a freelance web designer.

But where to start?

Worksheet: How to start a web design business

This is a good place. Sign up below to get a worksheet that will guide you through tasks — both major and minor — that need a place on the coaster track through ups, downs and occasional loop-de-loop of starting a web design business. Then keep reading for the high-level summary.

Step 1: Lay the groundwork

Before you begin an actual design work, prep your new business for success with some important planning measures:

Solidify your expertise. Make a plan to whip your skills into top-notch shape. You don't need expertise at everything, but ensure mastery of the basics.

Get into the freelance mindset. Dig in and read all you can about the first-hand experiences of other freelance web pros.

Write your business plan. Your business plan should articulate your menu of services, financial plans, target audience, and strategies to deliver your services.

Step 2: Create your community

Find your peeps. Embrace your community of fellow freelancers — whether in person or virtually. Seek out the networking opportunities that connect you with others, including competitors, collaborators and potential clients.

Build your ideal team. Build a circle of known and trusted "Power Partners" providing complementary services that work in sync with yours, without cannibalizing work or clients. Consider outsourcing tasks that don't require your technical or creative skills — including taxes, bookkeeping, shopping, and anything else you don't enjoy doing.

Step 3: Handle legal and HR tasks

Establish your legal entity. You can operate as a sole proprietor, but consider creating an LLC or corporation to protect your personal assets and maximize profit. Research business requirements of your local government, to determine if you need licenses or permits.

Get insurance. Surely you have car or house insurance, so talk to your local agent about options for business liability insurance. Based on my experience, freelance projects for my city government, the school district, and the local hospital all require it.

Plan benefits. If your previous job included medical, retirement, or other benefits, you'll need a plan to get the equivalent items in place. Can you be covered on a spouse or partner's medical insurance? What about setting up a retirement account? While you won't earn paid holidays or vacation, you'll want policies in place to set client expectations, and to provide for a backup resource if necessary.

Step 4: Set up facilities

Create your very own workspace. Create a home office allowing you to get work done, uninterrupted. Set and enforce boundaries, including rules ensuring your space is left untouched, and you are given time to work. Plan the office supplies you'll want within arm's reach.

Have a contingency plan. Power or internet service outages are a crisis for those who work at home. Know the local coffee shops or libraries where you can park for a few hours, using their wireless network and table space. Thinking on a larger scale, consider whether you need a disaster recovery plan.

Step 5: Arrange IT

Invest in hardware and software. Invest in solid and capable hardware, including:

top-notch computer

high-quality monitor

scanner

printer

good camera

Consider the right software for creating graphics, modifying photos, and documenting your work.

Have a strong backup strategy. Don't compromise on reliable security and backup strategies for your computers and office. Having these systems in place lets me sleep at night.

Step 6: Set up finance and accounting

Establish financial accountability. Set up a separate business bank account, debit card and credit card. Get up to speed on financial tracking software.

Get paid. Consider using a payroll service, where the small monthly cost lets someone else worry about ever-changing tax laws, and correctly filing government forms. Determine how you'll handle money, including establishing a pricing model, invoicing, and accepting payment online.

Step 7: Start marketing and advertising

Tell your story. It all begins with your brand, and your unique selling proposition. What puts you ahead of the pack? Why should someone hire you?

Build your online presence. Create the vehicle that showcases your work, shows your product/service offering, and covers your policies. Establish your social media accounts.

When it comes to selling your services, nothing tells your story better than your portfolio of completed work.

Assuming you've already built a few other websites (whether for fun or profit), you'll want to highlight your accomplishments and demonstrates the value you offer.

Create marketing collateral. Start with business cards, flyers or brochures, and any giveaways that get — and keep — your name in front of potential clients.

Step 8: Begin sales

Know your audience. Identify the right web design clients for you, and evaluation criteria for candidate clients. Strategize ways to find, meet, and land those folks. Having your elevator pitch at the ready means you're prepared when you meet potential clients in unlikely venues, including the gym, Starbucks, or at a concert.

Fine-tune your engagement strategy. Once you've found and landed those ideal clients, you'll need processes in place for providing estimates, proposals, and contracts.

Step 9: Establish quality systems

Ace the day-to-day tasks. Establish enough structure to ensure your work gets done, while allowing enough flexibility to protect a sane lifestyle. Set and enforce boundaries, adopt time management best practices, and maximize your productivity by setting up tools and systems.

Establish checklists and templates. Identify the key tasks that would benefit from consistent execution. Set up processes, checklists and organizing strategies.

Conclusion

Starting your own freelance web design business might seem like an overwhelming project, but starting off with a plan and mega-checklist is a great way to begin. Get your free checklist to get started on your strategy, and you'll be better prepared for the ride of a lifetime!

Also published on Medium.

Source: How to start a web design business so you set yourself up for success [worksheet]

Sketch is not a UX design tool

The popular design app for Mac is a refined evolution of the "pen-and-paper simulator", but does not attempt to model user experiences. Even the people who built an entire React renderer just to be able to use Sketch for UX design are looking to switch away from it. The future is somewhere else.

Drawing vector graphics was one of the very first professional applications for personal computers. In those Wild West days of the late 1970s, as soon as there was a microprocessor and a display device of even bearable quality, you would also find the brave hacker trying to somehow squeeze linear algebra algorithms and detailed model data into as little as 64K of memory. Some of them succeeded, a few even made billions — my favorite startup book The Autodesk File is the unedited account of the meteoric rise of one such company.

The computer I'm typing this on has an incredible 262144 times as much memory as those systems, but vector graphics software looks surprisingly similar. Those original drawing programs were quite literally "pen-and-paper simulators" because their output was a plotter. If you're of the Snapchat generation, the easiest way to explain this device is with a picture:

A Roland DXY-100 plotter from 1982

The plotter is quite simply a very primitive robot that moves a pen on paper. High-quality laser and inkjet printers were not yet available on the general market, so a plotter was the only option for getting your vector drawings out of the computer and onto a permanent medium. (You'd really want to do this. The diskettes of the era were certainly not a place to store any valuable data long-term...)

The fundamental design of vector graphics applications derived from the plotter. Your on-screen workspace is an artboard — that literal piece of paper. The pen tool represented an actual pen. The default render operation for paths is "stroke" because that's what the pen does. Fills and gradients came later (after Adobe invented and standardized PostScript). Illustrator built on the raster capabilities of PostScript, but did nothing to change the paper-centric core workflow.

All this seems obvious. How could it be otherwise? For one possible answer, we can look at an alternate evolutionary line of computer design tools which was not bound by the same pen-and-paper constraints: 3D modeling and rendering.

By and large, 3D is an "authentically digital" form of expression. There are CAD tools for industrial design that do model behaviors of the physical world, but as a baseline, modeling and animation tools don't even pretend to represent anything physical. You have an infinite workspace and an infinite number of ways to combine elements. For producing images out of models, you use shaders — a genuinely digital concept derived from programming rather than from any specific physical model. (Shaders can be used to simulate physical surface materials, but also purely invented visual models —this is a good example of a major conceptual leap beyond merely simulating pen and paper.)

So here we are, 30 years after Illustrator first shipped, and very little has changed in this corner of the design tool space. Illustrator itself has naturally accumulated baggage over time, and recent competitors like Sketch and Figma have found success by offering a streamlined take on the same functionality… But the underlying model itself has remained the same. You start a Sketch document by selecting an artboard size, then place elements inside it; everything is built from paths which have no more intelligence than the ones used to model those plotter drawings in 1980. It's still a pen-and-paper simulator.

A recent open source project highlights this problem. Last month, Airbnb released an interesting tool named React-sketchapp. It is a library that converts the output of React JavaScript code to Sketch documents. As news of this release spread on social media, there was widespread excitement… ("React" and "Sketch" are catnip for UI hackers today.) But there was also widespread confusion: how exactly does one use this library?

On the Hacker News discussion thread, the library's developer Jon Gold helpfully explains its use case at Airbnb. After visual components have been implemented in code, the team can use React-sketchapp to create Sketch files containing rendered vector graphics that matches the code. At a large company like Airbnb, this keeps the code as the "source of truth" and ensures designers are working using the latest versions of the visual components.

There is an elephant in this room: why does the code need to be converted into a flat "pen-and-paper simulator" type of document so that designers can work on it? Imagine if this library were called "React-plotter": it would produce plotter-compatible files from code, so that designers get a paper printout of the UI components and can use scissors and glue to make their designs… That sounds kind of backwards, doesn't it? Yet the reality of flattening live components into lifeless Sketch documents is fundamentally the same.

I'm not criticizing React-sketchapp in any way. It's a very clever, beautifully implemented library that solves an acute problem at Airbnb's scale. But the reality is that the author himself recognizes the problem I pointed out. In the Hacker News thread linked above, he writes:

[…] This is a baby step to get us to the point where component-centric tools like Deco and Subform are good enough to realistically switch our design team to.

The people who built an entire React renderer just to be able to use Sketch for UX design are looking to switch away from it. The future is somewhere else.

The next generation of tools can't be pen-and-paper simulators anymore. Artboards, layers and paths have had a great 40-year run, but they are not suitable metaphors for designing software. You don't see architects planning entire buildings using Lego blocks… So why are designers in the software industry still stuck with tools that have the same (non-existent) level of modeling intelligence about user interfaces that Legos have about buildings?

I believe that the evolution of CAD tools can provide some very valuable ideas for the software industry as well. In an upcoming post, I'll explore the state of modeling in CAD and how some of the concepts might apply to software development. One core learning is this: UI designers will need to start thinking on a higher level — but that also means giving up some control. The CAD tools used by architects don't focus their attention on picking precise colors of curtains and tablecloths; yet in the UX world, that degree of fussy control over details is often seen as a core focus for design work. (Not to say that attention to detail isn't important — it is! But the purpose and form of the building has to come way before the texture of the curtains.)

For now, I'll leave you with some links to new tools that attempt to model software UX in a designer-friendly way, including the two mentioned in the above quote from Jon Gold:

Decohttps://www.decoide.org

A component-centric IDE for React Native.

This is still a programmer's tool. Deco doesn't have a design UI for creating layouts, so you need to know JavaScript and React Native to make anything.

The company was recently acquired by Airbnb and development of the tool has been discontinued, but the entire Deco IDE is open source so anyone can continue work on it.

Subformhttps://subformapp.com

A new design tool that points the way to the CAD-like future I'm hoping to see.

So far Subform is not yet available to anyone except beta testers, so it's impossible to judge how it actually fulfills the promise.

Another downside of Subform is that it doesn't provide links to developers. Designs are still static entities separate from code, and so implementing them will still require manual programming labor just as before. There also doesn't seem to be any way to bring components implemented in code back to the design environment (similar to what React-sketchapp does).

React Studiohttps://reactstudio.com

A front-end design tool for web apps.

React Studio produces complete ReactJS projects (using Facebook's "create-react-app" toolchain).

This code generation is the unique selling point: you don't need to be a programmer to use React Studio, but the software also provides many hooks for developers to customize the code output through scripts and plugins. The core of React Studio is called the "Design Compiler". Using plugins, you can also bring manually coded or modified React components into the design environment, so it's a two-way link.

The downside is that there is a substantial learning curve: many of the concepts are foreign to designers with a traditional graphics background.

Native Studio by Neontoneonto.com/nativestudio

A sister product to React Studio. It uses the same Design Compiler approach, but outputs Xcode and Android Studio projects instead.

Native Studio offers something called "frameworkless cross-platform mobile development". Quite simply it means that the tool produces native code for each platform; there is no intermediate framework or library. Traditional cross-platform solutions like Xamarin, React Native etc. all use a runtime library to translate the cross-platform code into native concepts. The Native Studio approach instead produces native code at buildtime. It's a very different way of doing cross-platform, and requires a degree of collaboration/trust between designers and developers to be truly effective.

Any other software you think should be mentioned here? Let me know in comments!

(You can also follow me on Twitter, if you absolutely insist!)

Source: Sketch is not a UX design tool

Intagent Offers Real Estate Website Solutions in USA

Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 16, 2017 (Newswire.com) - Intagent is a top-rated Real Estate Website Design and CRM Lead Management firm rendering its services to real estate brokers, agents, and companies. They're a one-stop destination when it comes to "all things tech" in the real estate industry with the aim of making companies, brokers and agents successful in what they do best. With Intagent, clients can get customized solutions that meet their specific needs and revolve around their ideas, which are essential in the real estate business. Their marketing solutions and real estate website designs involve lead generation, presentation tools, content management tools and publishing listings. One can expect exceptional customer service and full-time support from Intagent's team of professionals, which ensures their website is up and running and every glitch or complaint is taken cared of.

Talking about their services, the Website Designer said: "At Intagent, we make it our goal to give you what you need and offer solutions that will make your road to success much easier. Our website designs and marketing solutions offer many features that make it easy for you to penetrate the market while at the same time offering you a friendly platform to use and navigate. Some of the features that you'll enjoy when you subscribe to us include a dedicated customer support, lead capture forms, free Intagent plugins, custom real estate modeled admin system, add virtual tours and videos, tablet/mobile-ready sites and much more. We offer all these features with your success in mind."

When it comes to realty website software in the USA, you can rely on us to deliver high-performance websites comprised of software that will see your business climb to greater heights. Some of the website and software solutions you can find at Intagent include CRM technology, mobile website technology, social media setup assistance, real estate company websites, for sale by owner websites, virtual assistance, among others. We'll find just the perfect fit for you to make sure you're up and running in no time.

Intagent specializes in offering the best realtor website marketing services in the US that will see different clients establish a strong presence of their brand in the market. Some of the ways that they use to achieve this are through organic search engine placement and pay-per-click search engine marketing. Organic search engine placement help clients boost their online exposure in the most natural way by helping them get high rankings on search engines. Pay per click is a great way to control one's budget while at the same time kick-starting a website in a niche market a client desires. All these methods might take some time to be fruitful, but they're worth the wait.

Speaking about their website software solutions, the Website Designer added: "When it comes to realty website software in the USA, you can rely on us to deliver high-performance websites comprised of software that will see your business climb to greater heights. Some of the website and software solutions you can find at Intagent include CRM technology, mobile website technology, social media setup assistance, real estate company websites, for sale by owner websites, virtual assistance, among others. We'll find just the perfect fit for you to make sure you're up and running in no time."

It's with no doubt that Intagent provides one of the best websites for real estate agents in USA services. Their websites for real estate agents in the USA come with many benefits such as SEO friendly, powerful blog, powerful IDX, excellent support, CRM lead management, lead forms and analytics and much more. For Design Pro Websites, one can pay $29.95 per month with no startup costs, while semi-Custom websites go for $595 plus a $29.95 fee per month.

About Intagent

Intagent is a renowned real estate website solutions provider that aims at creating high-performance, reliable and affordable website and marketing solutions to clients in the real estate industry. Their customers include real estate agents, brokers, and even large enterprises.

Source: www.intagent.com

Source: Intagent Offers Real Estate Website Solutions in USA

How To Make Any Website More User-Friendly

For some time now, websites have ceased to be an auxiliary tool for sharing information and promoting products. These days, business websites make up a huge part of the overall customer experience, and have more or less taken the place of physical storefronts. With this in mind, you need to make sure that your website is conducive to the best possible experience you can offer your target market. If you've been noticing a slump in your conversion rates, there's a fair chance that it's all tied up in your user experience. Here are just a few ways to make any website more user-friendly…

From Pexels

Keep the Design Simple and Functional

These days, a dominating trend in web design is applying simple imagery, and as little text as possible. This is simply what's been found to attract people. Furthermore, a lot of successful modern websites try to keep all of their essential information on a single page, avoiding having to redirect users from one page to another in order to get them to the information they came for. In most cases, JavaScript is used to achieve this feature. The obvious benefit to making sure your web design is simple and functional is that it's generally more appealing to the average consumer. Aside from improving engagement this way, it will also minimize loading times. This brings us onto our next point…

Compress your Code for Speed

From Pexels

One of the major things at the root of high bounce rates is slow loading times. The modern generation of consumers are extremely impatient! We've all been so spoiled by superfast broadband and the progress of technology in general that having to wait even a few more seconds for a page to load can define the way we think about a brand. Don't forget SEO and how loading speed influences your rankings. One of the best ways to speed your website up is compressing your codes through zipping software such as Gzip. This will fuse all your files together, and lessen the amount of HTTP responses that your coding would need to perform otherwise. The more HTTP responses that are tied to the server, the more full of traffic it will be, and the slower the website will respond to a user's actions. By limiting the traffic through HTTP responses, you'll be able to speed up the whole website.

Enable Content Caching With a CDN

If you've never heard of a CDN before, let alone used one, then you're limiting the potential quality of your website's user experience. Content Delivery Networks are tools that can be used to store your website data, and shoot it to different servers scattered all over the world. Let's say, for example, that your website is based in New York, and some of your target market happen to be based in Europe and Asia. When these visitors try to access your site, the CDN will be able to cache all of your site's data, and distribute it to these overseas servers in a flash, thereby making your visitors' user experience faster and more convenient. Therefore, any prospects who are based in Europe and Asia won't have to request access from a central US-based server in order to get onto the site, and stretch out their loading times. Using a Content Delivery Network can double a site speed, and reduce bandwidth by 70 percent in some cases, so obviously, this isn't something you can afford to overlook. While you're getting caught up in drafting new content and adding gimmicky features to your site, remember that one of the biggest staples of user experience is the speed at which your website loads.

Cover the Basics

While paying attention to your coding and similar technical elements is certainly important, you don't want to slip up by failing to cover the basics, and making things unnecessarily hard on the people who visit your website. Try to cut down the number of mandatory fields you include in forms, no matter how thin your customer personas are. Make sure all your PPC ads are consistent with the content on the actual site. Put visitors' minds at ease with fine print that's tied to your main copy. For example, after a big shiny button saying "subscribe now", you can have some microcopy explaining that you keep subscriber's details private. It can be surprisingly easy to overlook these smaller features of crafting a user-friendly website. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by spending all your resources on the technical, and not enough on the practical.

Source: How To Make Any Website More User-Friendly

Website Annotation and Design Collaboration Tools

The web design process today isn't isolated or confined to a team in one location. There are many people involved and there's lots of communication between clients and agencies, and within them between designers, developers and project managers. The lack of coordination and tools are a big roadblock for the web development process. Web annotation tools can help simplify the collaboration process. They make the design phase faster and more efficient. Web page annotations let teams work on real projects, leave comments, track issues and solve problems in real time.

This is a list of tools that can help teams collaborate faster and better on web development:

zipBoard zipboard.co

zipBoard is a visual bug tracking tool that can be used to review and collaborate on website. To annotate on websites, simply enter the website URL or upload your own mock images. All annotations can be saved as tasks and team members can be added as collaborators. zipBoard can be used as an issue tracking tool as well thanks to a central task manager. It has a simple interface which makes it easy to use without any technical or coding skills and teams can even use tags to sort annotations and keep their projects organized. zipBoard integrates with Slack and JIRA. zipBoard also allows unlimited collaborators and features including tags, version control and setting priority for each task. Even e-Learning developers and instructional designers can use zipBoard to upload their SCORM files and annotate on them.

Pricing: One project is free forever on zipBoard. Beyond this, paid plans start at $29/month and go up to $59/month.

Scrible https://www.scrible.com/

Scrible is a chrome extension that can be used for website annotation. This is a good tool for students as annotations can be arranged as libraries and saved for research. All annotations are indexed so they can be searched through. To access the Scrible toolbar users can click on the scrible icon. This tool works well for online PDFs and documents as well.

Pricing: Since Scrible is targeted mainly at students, the Basic and Edu plan is free while the Pro plan is $10/year for schools and $28/year or $3/month for colleges.

Diigo https://www.diigo.com/index

Users can annotate on website or online documents while browsing via the Diigo extension. The web annotations can be saved to a personal library for reference later. These annotations can also be shared via social media, in groups or saved to a personal library. The free plan for Diigo has no storage or collaboration options. The paid plans offer storage, have no ads and also come with an admin dashboard.

Pricing: Plans for Diigo starts at $40/year. It can also be subscribed to on a per user basis. This version is priced at $10/month per user.

PageProofer https://pageproofer.com/

PageProofer can be used to add web page annotations by adding a code snippet to websites. Teams can then work together on websites. PageProofer works well with responsive websites as well and also on Internet Explorer (8+). This makes it an effective visual bug tracker across browsers and devices. Priorities can be set on annotations and can be tracked by all collaborators.

Pricing: For up to 5 users, PageProofer is priced at $20/month. Plan prices increase based on number of users and go up to $125 for 50 users.

TrackDuck https://trackduck.com/

TrackDuck can work in two ways for annotating website. One way is to use the TrackDuck extension. The second method is to embed a code snippet into the website. The extension option is available for Chrome, Safari and Firefox. TrackDuck also offers uploading mock images. Collaborators can be added to projects and can be assigned the role of administrator, contributor or reporter. TrackDuck is, in fact, now part of the InVision family.

Pricing: The paid plans for TrackDuck start at $9/month and go up to $49/month. Apart from these, custom enterprise plans are also available.

Comparison of various website annotation tools. BugHerd https://bugherd.com/

BugHerd, along with offering website annotation, also captures information about the operating system and browser from which the annotations have been filed. These annotations are arranged on a kanban-like tracking board. Annotations can be sorted into three categories — Backlog, Todo, and Doing. This way of organization makes BugHerd an efficient collaboration tool. Attachments can also be added to each annotation.

Pricing: BugHerd plans range between $29/month and $180/month.

Hypothesis https://hypothes.is/

Hypothesis is a free tool for web annotation. Annotations can be added to public or private groups. The only thing needed to get started is a website URL. Hypothesis can also be used as a bookmarklet. When sharing the annotations on Hypothesis with another person, the person can only see the annotated page and needs to be in the same shared group to view and follow up on the annotations. Apart from annotating, users can also highlight elements. However, there is no feature to store annotations separately.

Pricing: Free

UserSnap https://usersnap.com/

UserSnap can be used as a browser extension or by inserting a code snippet into the site. UserSnap works well as a visual bug tracker because of the wide range of integrations offered. Apart from traditional project management tools such as JIRA, Trello and Slack, UserSnap also works with a number of other web development tools such as WordPress, Magento, Intercom, and Zendesk. Like BugHerd, it also collects information of the browser and operating system used to add annotation to the website.

Pricing: UserSnap plans start at $69/month and go up to $329/month, varying on the basis of users and support.

JIRA Capture https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/capture

Part of the add-ons offered by project management tool JIRA is Capture. All screens in the browser can be annotated upon and be added as tasks to track in the JIRA software. Testing and review sessions can also be recorded in Capture. The downside is the heavy overhead of setting up JIRA, which makes this solution not very suitable for small or medium sized teams. But for teams already on JIRA, this is a handy addition for website annotation.

Pricing: JIRA plans range from $10/month to $30/month.

Notable http://notableapp.com/

Notable can annotate on websites, images, or even power point documents. Notable can work as an extension on browsers. Notable is also available as a Mac or Windows application. It can even be accessed on an iOS application to annotate on screens via iPhones. Collaborators can be given differing levels of permission to provide feedback so access control is better. Feedback can also be shared as a URL for those outside the Notable system. All annotations on websites can be organized as single posts or in sets or in workspaces.

Pricing: Plans for notable start at $19/month and go up to $99/month.

DebugMe https://debugme.eu/

DebugMe can be used for website annotation and bug tracking on almost all popular web browsers including Opera, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge. It can be implemented in the form of a code snippet alongside the meta tag as well. It also integrates with project management tools such as Zapier, Trello and Slack, and also with email services including Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook. Annotations are automatically arranged as issues on kanban board, which can be customized. Apart from displaying the browser version and operating system information, DebugMe also captures information about JavaScript and cookies enabled. It has 2 project free forever for up to 2 users.

Pricing: Apart from the free package, paid packages for DebugMe are priced at $10/month(5 projects, 10 users), $24/month(10 projects, 20 users) and $49/month(30 projects, 60 users).

Honorable Mentions Conclusion

The key to a swift design cycle is being able to communicate effectively with team members during the design process and putting the feedback into practice. Without the right collaboration tools, it is difficult to not only share feedback but also to have the right context to implement it. Visual collaboration and bug tracking tools like the ones mentioned above can make the design process more efficient without having to type long emails explaining the problem or getting the entire team into a meeting to sort out bugs. Depending on the size and requirements of the team, these tools make creative collaboration in web development a breeze.

Source: Website Annotation and Design Collaboration Tools

Strata® Launches Design 3D CX Version 8.2 for Mac & PC

ST. GEORGE, Utah, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Strata, a leader in 3D technology for more than 25 years, announced a major update to their flagship software Design 3D CX. This update includes the addition of Publish VR which allows designers to export their designs from Strata to virtual reality at the touch of a button, and Render VR which lets users take 360° stereoscopic images and share them on VR viewers like Google Cardboard.

Strata CEO, Jon Wright said: "This VR17 release version of Design 3D CX makes virtual reality more accessible to 3D designers – and the clients and decision makers they need to impress. With this new version, designers can export their designs to virtual reality and our new inStudio VR app seamlessly, and also share VR images with others who can enjoy them in a highly immersive format without having to ever purchase a VR system of their own."

<>Getting the App: Design 3D CX

New users can get a free 30 day trial from Strata.com. Existing users can upgrade for $59.95.

Getting the App: inStudio VR

Strata inStudio VR is where Design 3D CX users can import their models and stage, view and alter their designs using an HTC Vive. The SE version of inStudio VR for HTC Vive is available directly from Strata's website, or from the Steam Store – free for a limited time.

Gear VR and Google Cardboard/Daydream Sharing

VR visualizations can be shared using the VR image capture feature. Clients can step into a design using a standard smart-phone.

About Strata:

Strata is an award winning 3D/VR/AR Developer that creates powerful 3D design software and custom solutions. "Design 3D" and "inStudio VR" are trademarks of, and "Strata" is a registered trademark of, Strata Mixed Reality Inc.

Media Contact:Austin Miller158116@email4pr.com (435) 628-5218

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/strata-launches-design-3d-cx-version-82-for-mac--pc-300455923.html

SOURCE Strata

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Source: Strata® Launches Design 3D CX Version 8.2 for Mac & PC

What Every SaaS Website Needs to Have

When selling software as a service (SaaS), a website is a critical piece for attracting new leads and educating them about the software itself. For many B2B SaaS firms, communicating how the software works and the value it provides is difficult to do without overwhelming the target audience. In our experience building B2B marketing websites for SaaS firms, we've found several elements that every SaaS website needs to have.

Showcase UI Images of Software

The user interface (UI) of the software is often the main thing a potential client is interested in seeing to determine if they want to learn more. It's important to showcase high-quality product photos of the UI on the website, particularly if the software has a clean user interface. The product photos of the interface should take center stage on the website, be easy to find, and showcase the important aspects of the UI design.

Highlight "Take a Demo" CTAs

As you know, no one wants to buy a software license if they can't try out the software. A customized software demonstration is the first step in showing a prospect how the software works and the value it offers them. For this reason, a SaaS website for B2B firms must have a call-to-action to take a demo throughout the website and in several spots on the home page.

Provide Videos & Webinar Demos

Not everyone wants to commit to a personalized demo right away, especially if they are still trying to determine what they need the software to do for them. We recommend having videos or webinars that demo the software on the website to allow these users to get a feel for the product. Another great way to demonstrate how the software works and the different features is through animated gifs. The best videos and gifs not only demonstrate how the software works and the tasks it accomplishes but highlights the benefits of using the software.

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Outline the Audience & Use Cases

Don't assume that your potential client knows they are the target market for your SaaS product. Take the time to outline the target audiences of your software and how they use it. If you have multiple user groups within an organization or have clients in various verticals, address this on your B2B website. Clearly outline who is using your product, how they are using the product and the benefits to them.

Provide Measurable Proof

Rather than saying that your SaaS does certain things, show what it accomplishes. Be sure to allocate space in your B2B web design to the measurable proof that your software does what it says it does. A great way to do this is with case studies or client testimonials (or reviews). If the main goal of your SaaS is to save time, show that it saved X amount of hours for a client. If the main benefit is that it makes the client's organization or process more efficient, highlight that a certain client was able to make their process more efficient and discuss how they did it.

Create Content for Each Buying Stage

Your ideal client goes through a variety of stages during the buying process. For B2B companies, particularly B2B software as a service firms, the buying process can be long, complex, and involve several different decision makers. The best way you can streamline the process for your sales team and for your prospects is by creating content for every step of the buying stage. Start by creating content that lures them in and catches their interest in your product. Then create content that educates them not just about the features, but the benefits of your software. Also, give them all the content they need to make a case internally for your product. Think of their boss and their boss's boss. Creating your own content marketing strategy for SaaS products is important to attract, qualify, nurture, and close deals.

Author: Kara Jensen

Kara Jensen is the Creative Principal of Bop Design, a B2B marketing and web design & development firm based in San Diego, CA. Dedicated to communicating each client's unique business value, Kara forges connections with target markets through strategic design and high-impact marketing concepts. Kara has 10 years of… View full profile ›

Source: What Every SaaS Website Needs to Have

Front End Bootstrap - Web Designer

Ofrohet vend pune Front End Bootstrap - Web Designer

Vendndodhja: Tiranë

Kategoria: Zhvillues Software

Deri ne: 09/06/2017

Lloji i punes: I Perhershem

ATIS (http://atis.al/), one of the biggest and best software houses in Albania has an opening for an experienced, versatile Front-End Developer. Our ideal candidate is detail-oriented and flexible, with proven experience developing modern, accessible, responsive websites for all types of clients. 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:• 3+ months of experience developing websites with HTML5/CSS3, JavaScript, and jQuery libraries• Experience working in Bootstrap and responsive front-end frameworks• Understanding of current trends and advancements on the web, with solid knowledge of Responsive Web Design (RWD) and RWD workflows• Expertise in modern web standards and best practices• Solid experience with testing and developing across multiple browsers and device types (tablets, smartphones, and so on) while maintaining a consistent experience• The ability to provide accurate time estimates on work• The flexibility to work both independently and with a team to manage time across m ultiple projects and tasks in a team environment• The skill to work collaboratively, translate client goals and objectives into attractive, user-friendly, functional website designs

RESPONSIBILITIES:• Develop HTML/CSS/JS markup and templates to build responsive websites with a strong focus on maintainability, cross-browser compatibility, and performance• Convert PSD compositions into mark-up — experience with Photoshop and Illustrator required• Work effectively within an agile, deadline-driven production process to complete web projects with rapid, iterative cycles• Work closely with designers, business analysts, project managers, and software engineers to ensure design standards are met throughout the lifecycle of the web project• Participate in requirements gathering and functional specification activities, providing feedback on implementation feasibility as well as navigable prototypes/mockups• Participate in the ongoing development and implementation of fro nt-end web coding and design standards, writing clear, clean, and concise code. Participate in discussions with team members about technical best practices and help identify optimal technical solutions• Stay current on the latest trends and emerging technologies within the UX/UI community.

DESIRED SKILLS:• Agency or corporate experience serving multiple client types• Experience using version control (such as Git/Github) in a production environment• Understanding of Agile methodology and applying best practices to the process• Graphic/UI design experience and a solid design portfolio

We offer • Competitive salary.• Pleasant working environment.

Source: Front End Bootstrap - Web Designer