Monday, November 2, 2015
Linwood East
by Rob Hope via One Page Love
3 Ways to Prevent Your Web Design from Becoming “Generic”
From time to time, we might find ourselves overworked. Perhaps there’s one month (or several) in the year where clients are snowballing left, right and center. You decide to cut corners and use Font Awesome instead of designing your own icon set, or researching some other kind of CSS-based icon toolkit.
And that’s how it starts. Before you know it, you’re automating your design choices without even so much as a second thought.
Let's explore 3 ways that we can break out of that awful slump.
1. Ditch Font Awesome and Try Other Icon Styles
Right, let me start by saying that there is actually nothing wrong with Font Awesome – I use it quite often. Not every single element on the webpage needs to be constantly clamouring for attention. Font Awesome is subtle, and sometimes all the user needs is a subtle hint.
However, sometimes we need to use icons on a much larger scale – often side-by-side with blocks of text as a means of adding further context while explaining things to the user – and this is where we cross the line from being subtlely understated to, unfortunately, generic.
Make no mistake: this is not a case of being flashy for flashy's sake. Icons are an ideal way of establishing a strong, memorable brand and they’re an essential factor in creating a style guide for any serious business.
As a quick rule of thumb: if your first choice of iconography is Font Awesome and you’re not researching any other icon styles, then your visual aesthetic has very likely become generic.
Design marketplaces such as Creative Market and UI8 are crawling with endless choices of fresh icon sets that are well made and very reasonably priced.
So, go and take a look!
2. Don’t Choose Flat Design Just Because Everybody Else Is
A lot can be said about flat design, both good and bad, and the same applies to Google's Material Design as well. I’ll say the same thing that I said regarding Photoshop and Sketch - it’s not about which is the better tool – it’s about which is better suited to the task at hand. Any competent designer should be able to compare both and decide which is most suitable (if any) on a technical level.
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Not only that, but both styles come with their own set of suggested fonts and colours, with Material Design being a lot more specific than the general principles of flat design.
It’s also important to remember that you don’t have to adopt the entire set of principles laid out by these styles of design, and instead I would suggest using them as a breeding ground for your own spawn of design aesthetic.
3. Fullscreen Headers Are a Big Risk
Having a huge, fullscreen header can make a bold statement – there’s no denying that – but it’s a wasted opportunity if you’re using the same old fonts, the same old “startup stocks” and the same old rounded corner (or “ghost”) buttons. It says nothing about you or your business and causes a delay in the user reading the awesome incentives of converting to your service.
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Consider these three alternatives instead:
- Reduce the big header by 10/20/30% to let the user know that there’s more to be read. If you need an attention-seeking “down arrow” to suggest that there’s more content, you’re probably doing it wrong. Websites shouldn’t need to come with a user manual.
- It’s highly unlikely that you’ll convert a user within a few seconds, but they will make a decision to keep reading or turn back within that critical time. Instead, use creative typography and alternative layouts to create a smart “mini-advert”.
Provoking a reaction is what will motivate the user to dedicate their valued time to learning more about what you’re selling. Adding a conversion button is plain common sense, but making it the sole focus of your entire above-the-fold content is aimless. It's like asking for the credit card of someone who is simply looking in your shop window. The timing is wrong
- Eliminate it altogether. If you can explain your website in a single sentence (or two), and offer three smashing reasons to buy it, then include a big conversion button and call it a day, then why bother with a big header?
Simply include a thorough FAQ and an easy way for the user to contact you, otherwise you may run the risk of overselling it or boring the user completely. For bigger commitments, such as expensive items or long-term subscriptions, this wouldn’t be suitable, but if you’re selling something small or inexpensive, there’s no need to make the website longer than it needs to be.
Continue reading %3 Ways to Prevent Your Web Design from Becoming “Generic”%
by Daniel Schwarz via SitePoint
Query Improvements in the Latest Versions of WordPress
Within the last year, much has been written about the improvements to the WordPress user interface: the most talked about change has been the improved writing experience.
But if you're a developer you'll be wanting to know less about that and more about what's changed under the hood. Here I'll demonstrate one of the most interesting changes for developers: improvements to certain types of queries.
The main changes are as follows:
- Support for nested queries has been added for queries on post metadata, dates, and taxonomy terms.
- Extra parameters have been added for querying comments.
- And some bugs have been fixed too!
Let's have a look at the changes.
Nested Queries
In previous versions of WordPress, you could use an AND or OR statement to define queries for taxonomy terms, dates, and metadata. So for example, the following arguments will be used in a query on a recipe site which outputs quick breakfast recipes:
<?php
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'tax_query' => array(
'relation' => 'AND',
array(
'taxonomy' => 'speed',
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => array( 'quick' )
),
array(
'taxonomy' => 'meal',
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => array( 'breakfast' )
)
)
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );
?>
This looks for the 'speed' and 'meal' taxonomies and outputs posts with the 'quick' and 'breakfast' terms respectively.
But what if you wanted to write a more complex query? Let's say you wanted quick recipes for breakfast and slow recipes for lunch (maybe for someone who wants to get breakfast done quickly so they have more time to cook lunch!). You don't want to use a simple AND statement to join all the elements of your query, since then you would get slow recipes for breakfast and lunch, for example. And you don't want to use an OR statement linking all the terms, as you'll get all manner of recipes which only have one of the queried terms along with other ones you want to filter out.
The good news is that now you can do this. To query quick recipes for breakfast and slow recipes for lunch, you'd use the following:
<?php
$query = new WP_Query(
array(
'tax_query' => array(
'relation' => 'OR',
array(
'relation' => 'AND',
array(
'taxonomy' => 'meal',
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => array( 'breakfast' )
),
array(
'taxonomy' => 'speed',
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => array( 'quick' )
)
),
array(
'relation' => 'AND',
array(
'taxonomy' => 'meal',
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => array( 'lunch' )
),
array(
'taxonomy' => 'speed',
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => array( 'slow' )
)
)
)
)
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );
?>
Here I've used two nested arrays:
- The outer array uses
OR, because we're looking for posts which are either quick breakfast recipes or slow lunch recipes. - The first nested array looks for posts which are quick breakfast recipes, using
ANDbecause you want the post to have both terms. - The second nested array looks for slow lunch recipes, again using
AND.
Of course you could vary your queries to include multiple taxonomy terms and values, and get as complex as you need.
Applying Nested Queries: Taxonomy Terms, Metadata, and Dates
The example I've given above uses taxonomy terms, but this feature has also been added to date and metadata queries. Metadata is potentially where things could get interesting, as you have the scope for so many values.
The syntax works in exactly the same way for date and metadata queries. For meta queries you replace tax_query with meta_query and use 'key' and 'value' as the parameters. For date queries you replace tax_query with date_query and use the date parameters provided in the WordPress Codex.
Comment Parameters
To query comments, you use the WP_Comment_Query class in place of the more commonly used WP_Query class. This class has had eight new parameters added to it:
'author__in': identify comment author (or an array of authors)'author__not_in': identify comments not by a certain author (or array of authors)'post_author__in': identify author (or array of authors) of the post the comment was made on'post_author__not_in': exclude comments made on posts written by particular author or array of authors'comment__in': comments with a certain ID or array of IDs'comment__not_in': exclude comments with a certain ID or array of IDs'post__in': comments made on a post or array of posts (using the post ID)'post__not_in': exclude comments made on a post or array of posts (using the post ID)
The values used for these are the author ID, comment ID or post ID as appropriate.
Note that the WP_Comment_Query class now supports nested queries as well.
Bug Fixes
There have also been a couple of bug fixes which you might find helpful:
- A bug that caused queries to fail when a
date_querywas used along with atax_queryormeta_queryhas been fixed. - When
‘orderby' => 'meta_value’was used when passing a'meta_query'with theORrelation inWP_Query, this used to break the query. This has been fixed.
If you want the lowdown on all the details, you can find it on the make WordPress core site.
Summary
These improvements to queries take WordPress a step further to full CMS capability. The ability to use nested queries means that you can output content in much more flexible and complex ways. It will be interesting to see how people use them!
by Rachel McCollin via Tuts+ Code
Introducing our Premium One Page Website Review Service
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The full review covers 6 main areas:
1. First Impression
This section consists of our immediate thoughts upon first review without reading the submitted build notes. These comments often pick up issues with the overall concept and flow of the website. Often a team has been working on a website so long they forget that it needs to be much clearer to new users.
2. User Experience (UX)
“User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the One Page website. UX feedback covers:
- Language tone
- Trust
- Transparency
- Navigation and browsing
- Consistency
3. Design
These design notes are suggestions that come from a subjective point of view. Design feedback covers:
- Logo
- Branding
- Responsive adaption
- Spacing
- and more
4. Code
These code notes are suggestions based on reports from online services but also include experienced suggestions for good practice. Code feedback covers:
- PageSpeed Insights
- Source Code inspection
- Search Engine Optimization
- Heading hierarchies
- and more
5. Grammar
Bad grammar and spelling result in terrible first impressions and decrease conversions. We point out the errors.
6. Final Thoughts
Suggestions on ways to improve the overall website concept delivery. This could include simplifying the website or even adding more elements to increase trust.
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by Rob Hope via One Page Love
How to Create a Facebook Video Ad That Moves People to Action
Are you using Facebook video ads for your business? Want to improve your conversions? Well-structured video ads command viewers’ attention and prompt them to take action. In this article you’ll discover five steps to crafting the perfect Facebook video ad. Why Facebook Video Ads? Facebook’s head of ad product Ted Zagat recently said that a […]
This post How to Create a Facebook Video Ad That Moves People to Action first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
Social Media Examiner - Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
by Anja Kicken via Social Media Examiner