Showcase of Landing Page Design
Published February 28th, 2012 in Galleries - 12 Comments
Effective landing pages are critical to growing an online business. In many cases landing pages are used as the first page that is viewed by someone who is clicking on an ad or an affiliate link, rather than sending the visitor to the homepage. The landing page is designed with one purpose in mind, to get some specific action from the visitor. It could be to purchase a product, create an account, sign up for a mailing list, sign up for a free trial, or any other type of action.
In some cases the landing page may actually be the home page. In these situations the homepage is designed to lead visitors towards the specific action. Some of the examples shown here will fall into this category.
Having an effective landing page can drastically increase conversions, and revenue as a result. For this reason, being able to design landing pages is a valuable skill.
Here we will look at more than 20 examples of well-designed landing pages.
Packaging Design Inspiration
Published February 27th, 2012 in Galleries - 4 Comments
Packaging design is a critical aspect of product development and can play a significant role in sales by capturing the attention and interest of customers. Products that feature effective packaging design are typically more appealing to customers than equal products with sub-par packaging. A high level of quality in the packaging often results in a higher opinion of the quality of the actual product by potential customers.
In this post we’ll showcase 30 examples of great packaging design for your own inspiration.
10 Things You Can Do Today to Become a Better Designer
Published February 23rd, 2012 in Business, Design - 16 Comments
One of the challenges of being a web designer is the need for continual improvement. While you will certainly gain experience and improve skills through client projects, it’s also necessary to dedicate some time outside of client work to focus on new skills and staying up-to-date with an industry that changes at a rapid pace.
Since we all have busy schedules to start with, getting a real impact with the time you set aside for learning is essential. In this article we’ll take a look at some things that you can do today to improve your abilities in some way. Even with just a small amount of time available, there are things that you can do with a focus on continual growth and improvement.
25 Photo Editing Tutorials for Photoshop
Published February 22nd, 2012 in Design, Photoshop Tutorials - 5 Comments
Most professional digital photos are touched up in some way or another. Photoshop is, of course, one of the leading programs for photo editing, so learning the basics of the possible photo editing techniques can have a positive impact on the end result of your photography. For designers, many photos that are provided by clients will need some touch ups to get the best look possible.
In this post we’ll link to 25 helpful tutorials that teach different aspects of photo editing in Photoshop.
How to Reduce Digital Noise in a Photograph
Showcase of Magazine-Style Web Designs
Published February 20th, 2012 in Galleries - 9 Comments
Magazine-style layouts are very popular for blogs and news sites that publish high volumes of content. This style of layout typically shows excerpts of headlines of articles from a variety of different categories or topics on the front page, allowing visitors to have easy access to more content compared to a typical blog-style layout.
In this post we’ll showcase 21 different magazine-style designs for your own inspiration.
25 Dark and Amazing Website Designs
Published February 15th, 2012 in Galleries - 16 Comments
While dark backgrounds don’t work well in all situations, they can help to create a great-looking website in the right situation. Looking for inspiration for designing a dark website of your own? In this post we’ll showcase 25 examples of beautiful dark websites to help get the creativity flowing.
25 Nature-Inspired Websites
Published February 14th, 2012 in Galleries - 11 Comments
Some of the most inviting website designs use elements inspired by nature. Whether it is a large photo background, an illustration of nature, or some other element, nature-inspired designs appeal to many visitors, and they are an ideal fit with certain industries and companies.
In this post we’ll showcase 25 nature-inspired websites for your own design inspiration.
Showcase of Annual Report Design
Published February 13th, 2012 in Galleries - 11 Comments
Annual reports are important for presenting information to a company’s investors, so having an annual report that looks professional and presents a good image can certainly help the cause. The design of the report is, of course, secondary to the content, but still important.
In this post we’ll showcase some examples of annual report design for your own inspiration. These samples come from the Behance Network, and in most cases you can see more images from each annual report by clicking on the image and following the link to Behance.
Getting More Out of Your Blog Archives
Published February 9th, 2012 in Blogging - 5 Comments
Bloggers typically dedicate a lot of thought and effort into topics that should be covered with their upcoming posts, and rightfully so, but older posts are often quickly forgotten both by the blogger and by readers. As a blog continues to publish new content the archives will grow larger and larger, and for many blogs the archives include a wealth of information and content that is not being maximized.
For most blogs, posts from the archives can continue to be useful for years to come (of course, this depends on the specific content of the post) if they are actually seen by visitors. The archives can be helpful for a number of different purposes, including attracting new subscribers, building a newsletter list, selling products, promoting your own services, promoting affiliate products, selling advertising, and more.
If your blog has been around for a while, chances are you have archives that could be doing more for you, and helping more readers at the same time. If you’re looking to get more out of your archives there are two things that you need to know first:
1. What posts from the archives are already attracting visitors? You probably have some specific posts that attract search engine traffic on a consistent basis, or maybe a popular website or blog linked to one of your posts and it results in a consistent flow of referral traffic.
2. What posts from your archives would you like to get more exposure? Maybe these are you best quality posts that would showcase your expertise, or maybe they would be good for promoting a related product or service.
Tips for Improving Posts That Already Attract Visitors
So you’ve done some analytics research and you know that a few of your posts attract a decent number of pageviews each month without any effort from you. Most likely they get a steady flow of traffic from search engines, but it could be other sources as well. The typical situation is that you probably created a quality blog post, it attracted some links, you haven’t paid any attention to it since then, but it still gets a steady flow of traffic. The traffic is great, but it could be much more valuable to you if that traffic is converted into something specific. That “something specific” will depend on your blog, the subject and content of the particular post, and the approach you want to take with your blog.
Here are some tips for getting more out of these types of blog posts.
30 Unique Business Cards
Published February 7th, 2012 in Galleries - 15 Comments
Unique business cards can help you to stand out to potential clients. Being more memorable will often result in being more likely to get hired. Fortunately, there are all kinds of possibilities to create unique business cards. In this post we’ll showcase 30 examples for your own inspiration.
