Category

Web Design

Sep 07
0
Is your Website Working for You?

Is Your Website Working For You?

By | Consulting, Graphic Design, Marketing, Web Design | No Comments

After investing time and money in your website, you might question if it is helping your business. The problem may not be your practice, it may be problems with your website. There are many steps to consider to build a useful website, so there is a chance you may have missed some key points. To make things a little easier, we compiled a list of what to look for in an effective website. These might just be the things that you are keeping your website from being successful. Try to use these ideas to get your website in the best shape to better fits your user’s needs.


Does your website have the look and appeal to attract and retain visitors?

Your site should reflect who you are and what you represent; whether its products, services or just a personal site. You need to have a base set of colors that go well together to set the appropriate settings for your visitors. Don’t over do it and try to stick with two to three main colors for your site. Make sure that your text is readable and the font size and color don’t make it disappear into the background of the site.

Keeping your site simple is also one of the best ways to send a clear message of what you are about. Try not to overload the viewers with too many images or images that could either clash or just not make sense to the overall theme of your site.

Your Message
Don’t overwhelm the user with text. You should be clear and to the point, but break it up so your users will not lose interest. You have try and retain your visitor, so don’t run them out with a page full of text that is hard to read or takes a while to give them the info that they are looking for. Make sure to change it up with updated content every once and a while, to keep users coming back. 

User Experience
When you bring visitors to your site, you should strive to make the experience as pleasant as possible. We have already addressed ideas like keeping text easy to read and not overwhelming, but you should also consider the simplicity of the overall experience.

You should have fast loading pages so that your user will not close out and try to find a new site. Also, keep page scrolling to a minimum. The easier it is to find the information a user is looking for, the more likely they are to keep using your site. Have important links up front and make them easy for the user to find.

Make sure your site flows properly. You should have easy to access navigation and content elements utilizing logical placement. If you have ever heard the phrase “above the fold” pertaining to a website, you might know that it means the space that will appear first without being cut off from the bottom of the screen. This is the space that a user first sees where there is no scrolling required. Any content you place below that should be either be secondary information or a follow up to the information that you provide above the fold, when the user first sees your page.

Aug 31
0
Finding Inspiration

Finding Inspiration

By | Graphic Design, Marketing, Web Design | No Comments

Let’s be honest….there are days when your creative juices are overflowing and you have a hundred great, new ideas, just bursting at the seams. Then there are other days, where you feel like you are wandering around a desert, hoping for just one idea to come along. During those dark and idealess days, I try and find inspiration to help spark something. There are thousands of different websites to get inspiration, these just happen to be my favorite places to go.

1. Google

This one might seem a little obvious, but whenever I need new ideas I start with Google. Now, google has a much more “business” approach to finding things. It doesn’t always give me great new marketing or design ideas, but it does show me what a lot of other brands are doing. It’s always a good idea to have a base line to start off from. Plus, searching on Google helps me to make sure that my product or design stands out among the rest of them.

2. Behance or Designspiration

The next place I like to search, is Behance or Designspiration. It is in the exact opposite direction of Google (which gives a more of a logical approach), and goes to the extreme artistic side of things. Most of the projects you will find on these sites are not campaigns or marketing materials. They are however, great places to check out different trends going on in the artistic world. This can help you figure out what direction you may want to take a project. I find myself seeing things done in ways I might not have thought. Seeing certain elements or textures that I really like, can give me inspiration to pull from.

3. The Design Blog

Another place I enjoy getting inspiration is from design blogs. One of my favorite blogs is The Design Blog. This is a great place to really focus in more on what you are specifically looking for, such as branding, advertising, print design and many more examples. You can also find a lot of freebies on blogs like this one, that might save you some time in the future.

4. How, Print & Communication Arts Magazines

A great place to get inspiration, especially if you are working on printed materials is by flipping through magazines. Things really are designed differently when they are printed, opposed to just seeing them online. It creates a different feel for the consumer. Personally, I love seeing what sort of ads a magazine has, how an article is laid out in a unique way and what kind of images are used. You can really find inspiration from any magazine, but my favorites are HOW, PRINT and Communication Arts.

5. Pinterest

My favorite place to go when I need inspiration is on Pinterest. I have come across so many people who have never thought to use Pinterest for marketing inspiration. They think it’s only great for DYI projects, but the truth is that they have some great marketing and design inspo. So many people pin items from their portfolios, or interesting facts and infographics they find. It’s a great place to see what types of things are trending and hopefully stir up some creativity.

There are so many different websites that are used to get inspired; share some of your favorite places with us!

Aug 03
0

Why you Need a Responsive Website

By | Consulting, Web Design | No Comments

Responsive web design is an approach to web design, that allows desktop webpages to be viewed in response to the size of the device one is viewing with. This means that the content you are viewing should look the same on your desktop computer, laptop, tablet and smartphone. If you don’t understand why you need a responsive website, check out a few tips that explain how a responsive website could be the best approach for your business.

1. People have gone mobile

Just a few short years ago, we saw a shift in how the average user accesses the internet. In 2015, the average time a user spent on the internet on a mobile device has jumped up to 2.8 hours out of 5.6 hours. That makes a total of 51% of time online is spent on a mobile device. As this trend continues to rise, it is important to meet the needs of your website visitors. If your site is not displaying properly on mobile devices, you are not providing a positive experience for your audience.

2. Provide users the best possible experience

One way to provide the best experience for a user, is to ensure that they are familiar with your site. Navigating the layout of your page should be consistent, regardless of users going from mobile to desktop. By building a responsive site, you don’t have to worry about different devices changing the overall experience for your users.

3. Save time

When you build a responsive website, you won’t have to worry about building and maintaining different websites for mobile and desktop. When you need to make updates, they will only need to be made on a single platform. This eliminates the worry of forgetting to make the changes on more than one site.

4. Search engines prefer responsive

In many studies experts have found that responsive websites rank better than similar non-responsive sites. You want people to find you online quick and easy right? By building a responsive website, you will be helping the major search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing direct traffic to you. This makes your chance of getting conversions substantially higher.

5. Save Money

Piggy backing on saving time, you also save money! It may be a bit more expensive up front to hire an expert designer to build your site, but it will mean less time and money spent in the long term. Updates to only one site, instead of across multiple platforms, significantly brings down the costs of website maintenance.

Jun 23
0

4 Tips To Optimize Your Web Page Load Time

By | Consulting, Web Design | No Comments

We’ve all experienced the joys of staring at a computer screen or mobile device while embracing the warm glow of the benevolent loading screen. Wait no… no we haven’t. Usually when you need information the quicker the better. A lot of people would agree considering that 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. Up to 40% will abandon the site all together if they have to wait more the three seconds. This can hurt your bottom line. When people don’t even bother to stick around to see what your site has to offer, you lose out on conversions.

Have you noticed this problem on your own site? Are you worried that you are missing out on sharing your message or service to potential patients? If you are experiencing these problems, try out these four tips to optimize your site for the best possible load time.

1.  Optimize images and design elements.
When the site begins to load, it has to load all the images from the entire site. This is how the user can actually see them. This process can take a lot of bandwidth, which in turn slows down the load time of the site. Make sure to optimize your images to be web friendly by reducing the resolution or size, by using an image editor. Don’ts use unnecessary large sized images and plan ahead when selecting your images and design elements.

2.  Javascript and CSS files should be external files.
They should not be directly placed into your HTML. This allows your browser to cache these files and will reduce page load time. You should also place any javascript files at the end of the body or use the ‘async’ attribute to load them asynchronously. If there is an error in your javascript files and you try to load them first, you might cause your page to render improperly or not at all.

3.  The less HTTP requests the better.
If you can reduce the number of image requests by using CSS Sprites it will speed up your load time for images. This is because you are making one request for an image that contains a variety of the images that you actually need. You should also consider combining javascript files together, as well as combining CSS files. Every time you load an image, javascript file or CSS file, your browser makes a request for the files and has to wait for a response. These requests can significantly bog down your load time if not managed properly.

4.  Reduce the size of cookies.
Cookies are used to store data that needs to persist between requests. This data is sent on every request and adds to the load time when it’s big. By reducing the size of the cookies you reduce the size of the data that is transferred, and decrease the page load time. Eliminate unnecessary cookies or reduce the size of the cookies.

May 09
0

Collaboration = Success

By | Consulting, Graphic Design, Marketing, Web Design | No Comments

Why is collaboration important to a practice?
We are sure you want to feel like you make meaningful contributions to your practice. At some point we have all had the experience in our career of receiving a sketch/outline/”napkin” and asked to make it look good. It’s important for a practice to collaborate so that a project, whether internal or external will be the best solution.

“Napkins, by my definition, are prototypes in themselves: a skipping to the end that leaves us out, the end of the conversation.” – Aubrey Crane, Partner at Design Map

There are several ways to approach how to handle a response to a napkin as well as how to allow more contributions from your colleagues. All very different techniques, but all reaching for the same thing… better solutions. A team will always create top-quality work, when all members feel equally important.

For Eyemax, design is much more than just putting a nice photo into a brochure or crafting content for a website. Our design process includes everything from defining patient/practice needs, concepting to prototyping and testing to implementing. As a company Eyemax upholds the idea of “collaboration is key for success,” which allows us to create better solutions for our clients.