UI / UX Tips

Homepage is the face of your website . No matter where your visitors land from, the homepage continues to be the most popular page of your website because that is where the browsing journey begins.Therefore, you need to devote a good amount of time and effort to design your homepage and make it fair high on the usability quotient. Here are 8 ways you can do it: Include a Tagline Draft out a one-sentence tagline that explains to the visitors the purpose of your website and company. If you are fairly new in the market and wish to create awareness about your products and services, a tagline is a must for you. This is because the tagline can be squeezed under your brand name and it can be uttered with the company name in the same breath. A good tagline instantly informs the reader what the company is about and how useful can it be. Mark Title Tags Make sure the title tag of your homepage begins with the company name and gets followed by a brief description of the website. Avoid starting th...

One misconception is how strenuous and complicating designing and launching a website can be. This task can be daunting if certain steps are not taken and sometimes it may not turn out the way you had intended. The design may translate poorly and the content uncoordinated and confusing if it is not something that you can do yourself or if the right tools were not used. Persons tend to overwork and crowd their web page with either content or graphics. Most web pages don't need much work to be appealing, however, this does not mean that drab, boring and uninformative is essential. When designing a web page for any purpose, be sure to have the design match its purpose, which is the representation of your product and/or service. When your web page is visited by a potential or regular customer they should be able to ascertain the business's purpose. Regardless of the quantity of information you have, the navigation and user interface on the main pages of your web page should be sim...

In a prior issue we touched on the subject of avoiding deliverability of your website as regards functionality issues. We mentioned that you should visit other websites in your niche market or even websites in general to get a grasp of various sites and how they attempt to fulfill the owners objectives. Look at the website theme and ask yourself a simple question... ' Did I understand and grasp the websites communication objective. These are important considerations when you plan to own your own website, and it does not matter whether you are a small business, big business, work at home mom or internet marketer, the principles are still the same. First and foremost is obviously the issue of defining your target or niche market that you plan to serve or where you hope to make your money. This has a huge impact on sustained website success, and is the most important website planning aspect. In future issues we will deal with this subject in more detail as it is defined as the "...

What information should you include on the resume of a UI designer? This article should give you some ideas of the sort of experience that an employer is looking for on the resume of a UI designer. Once you have read this article you may also want to take a look at our FREE resume tips section to find out how to put your resume together. If you would like a FREE copy of our email guide: Is your resume letting you down?: How to dramatically improve your resume (please click here now!) What information to include for a Resume UI designer: 1. The name of each of your employers and your job titles should be included on your resume. 2. A brief description of what each employer does (if they are not well known). 3. The number of staff you manage (if applicable). 4.Planning, analysis, design, implementation and testing responsibilities as a UI designer. 5. Details of specific architecture, systems, etc. 6.The major projects that you have worked on and whether you completed the projects on tim...

How to keep your software's UI consistent when many programmers are working on the project. In a development team with half a dozen programmers all working on the same project, creating a uniform user interface can be a nightmare. There can be problems ranging from inconsistent use of icons to language (e.g. formal vs. informal). So the question is, what's the best way to achieve a cohesive user experience? Few would argue the importance of UI design these days, especially since companies like Google and Apple have spoilt users with dazzling almost joy-to-use interfaces. But a functional application is still more important at least initially, you can always pretty things up once your software actually works. When working as a UI designer, it was my responsibility to create mockups for the application being developed. Once I had created the HTML and image files in Web Expression and Photoshop, all I needed to do was bring them into Visual Studio as Master Pages. This worked out ...

Square buttons, round buttons, flashy buttons … will they match my shoes, my handbag or my tie? Are you stuck in a maze of buttons, headings, bullets, sub-headings and colour schemes? STOP!!!! Take a deep breath and read some practical tips for professional looking websites. 1. Select a colour scheme and stick to it. If your company has a logo or preferred colours on its stationery that’s a good start. For those of you starting from scratch, choose two or three complementary colours and stick with them – don’t change colours on every page. The most common colour schemes include: - Red, yellow and white - Blue and white - Red, grey and white - Blue, orange and white - Yellow, grey and white. If you’re not sure what colour scheme to choose, surf the internet and find a website that you like. You can then model your colour scheme on what already exists. 2. Use templates. Can’t find a website you really like? Another option is to choose a template. There are many templates or pre-set desi...

I absolutely think that beginner web designers should use templates. And by templates, I mean something that you might buy off ThemeForest or other template selling service. Here are a few reasons why: * Tweaking = learning. Templates need to be changed/altered/tweaked. That’s the whole idea of a template. When a beginner designer does those things, they are learning how code works. Tweaking WordPress themes is exactly how I got into web design. * Quality. When the site is “done”, a beginner will have something they are likely very proud of. Probably more proud than if they started from absolute scratch and ended up with something very basic (or downright ugly). That will provide good momentum for sticking with it. * “Real world.” Assuming the template is well-coded, the beginner will be looking at a good amount of quality markup and well organized efficient CSS. That is nice head-first dive into real world front end design, as opposed to starting with the kind of markup...