5. Quotes. A famous quote is like a beautiful photo.  Everyone enjoys them, especially if they’re relevant to what you do.  Use quotes to convince people of your position.  If you’re selling flowers, use a great quote from Shakespeare about roses.  If you’re selling consulting, use a quote from John Maxwell about leadership.  A famous quote can sway people to believe what you want them to believe.  People are influenced by famous people and a quote placed at the right time can really be powerful.  In fact, Abraham Lincoln once said, “A great quote is worth more than all of Solomon’s gold.”  Just kidding.  He didn’t say that.

Well, good news. The development team at Red Rocket has come up with a way to ensure that every user experience has amazing, crisp, high-definition images without jeopardizing bandwidth. We use what’s called ‘high definition graphics’ to deliver high-quality images whose resolution is based on the user’s device.

Here’s how it works. As our client’s website is being transferred from the server to the user’s device, the images are interpolated to display at their required size – adjusting the resolution to accommodate either phones or tablets. Check it out here.

So, why should you consider adaptive image resolution?

1. Beautiful images regardless of device.
2. Little or no impact on bandwidth.
3. Server-side interpolation.

Just another way our team of specialists are bridging the user-experience gap between various web devices.

Custom drop down menu? Coming right up. Hand drawn H1 font? Not a problem.

Truth of the matter is that we can’t always afford that luxury. So, in comes the online resource. Here’s some  things that I receive typically requests for when working on web design. Resources like this are great for when you have designers block or when you need to squeeze a project in under budget. Of course if the project calls for it, never hesitate to pick up the pencil.

Here’s the Freebies:

Simple Social Icon Set

Natural Photo Textures

Taped Image Corners

Metro Vector Icons

Stylish Audio Player

Although the technology is still technically in the development phase, many companies are already converting their old sites into HTML5. For example, in a recent interview with the New York City based video sharing giant, Vimeo, a representative stated that the company is already upgrading to HTML5 so that users will no longer be dependent on 3rd party video software such as Adobe’s Flash Player.  Here, Vimeo is referring to HTML5′s new video tag which makes 3rd party video players mostly obsolete. This means that people using the site are not forced through an abrasive download process which will like reduce bounce rates.   In addition to the video tag, HTML5 offers several other great new features such as:

• The <canvas> element for 2D drawing
• The <audio> element for media playback
• Support for local storage
• New content-specific elements, like <article>, <footer>, <header>, <nav>, <section>
• New form controls, like calendar, date, time, email, url, search

Although the official release of HTML5 may be a year or two away, the reality of this new technology is here today. A tip for web developers – USE HTML5!

4. Trivia. There’s a reason why Jeopardy! has been on the air since March 30, 1964.  People love trivia.  They love to learn little facts that are digestible because it makes them feel smarter.  Who doesn’t want to feel smarter?  Use trivia on your Facebook page to engage people.  It makes them think which makes them associate intelligence with your company.  When you teach them something, there’s a tiny part of their brain that feels that they need to reciprocate and give something back to you.  That might be all that it takes to nudge out the competition when it comes down to choosing who they do business with next time.

Props to Nielsen who has been the grandfather of website design since the early ’90s – before there was really any such thing as user-experience. Everything you want to know about Jakob Nielsen and his website design can be learned by visiting his site here.

From a functionality standpoint it’s difficult to tell what any particular audience wants from your company’s mobile website experience. For example, are users hitting the mobile site for contact info? To order quickly? Or to check the status of something? Whatever it is – the content must be consistent with the traditional desktop website. One sure way to upsetting your customers is to provide either desktop or mobile users different content. Imagine mobile users getting a coupon for 25% off their offer while desktop users get 35% off.

While as of late the popular choice when considering various devices has been ‘responsive design’ – a method with which a desktop website can designed to respond to mobile or tablet devices and maintain a level of consistency with respects to user-experience. The problem is however that responsive design has yet to become standardized and results are mixed.

At Red Rocket, we are cautiously optimistic when it comes to bleeding-edge technology and because of that – have evolved our development process to include such devices but never at the risk of garnering the desired results our customers are looking for. What we’ve come up with is a desktop experience that has evolved from mobile and tablet devices without jeopardizing content.

The cool thing about these blogs is that they have done a lot of the work for you by compiling a comprehensive list of good web design inspiration.

So consider this to be a blog about web design blogs.

Check it out!

Six Revisions

Design Instruct

DesignM.AG

designshack

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. At Red Rocket, it is our goal to get your website to the top of the Google, the world’s premiere search engine, whenever possible.

WordPress: WordPress is an extensive CMS, or content management system based on PHP (programming language) and mySQL (open-source database). It is by far the most popular content management system on the web used by over 15% of the world’s “Top 1 Million” websites. WordPress is open source meaning anyone has the right to edit and build upon its core technologies. This then allows for the development of plugins and “Themes” which drive WordPress extension capabilities. Basically, WordPress can be customized in both design and functionality. The possibilities are virtually endless.  

Open Source Technology: An open source technology is a system licensed for general public use. This means anyone has the right to edit or build upon the technologies’ core design. WordPress is an example of an open source technology as anyone can freely use it anywhere on the web and customize it to any extent.

WordPress Theme: A theme refers to a customizable framework that incorporates elements of a given website’s design and functionality. At Red Rocket, we design and develop custom themes specific to each client’s needs and demands

WordPress Plugin: A plugin is a type of application developed to be easily integrated into another software. In the case of a WordPress plugin, a developer would create an application to run a process that WordPress does not support by default. An example would be a Google Maps plugin that allows one to easily place Google Maps into their WordPress website. Another example would be Contact Form 7, which allows users to easily integrate a contact form on a web page. Often times, WordPress plugins are free to use and easily to install. However, some plugins are considered “Premium,” meaning the plugin much be purchased. 

Domain Name: A series of alphanumeric strings separated by periods, such as www.oup-usa.org, serving as an address for a computer network connection and identifying the owner of the address. The last three letters in a domain name indicate what type of organization owns the address: for instance, .com stands for commercial, .edu for educational, and .org for nonprofit.

Web Hosting: When it comes to having a site on the web, choosing a host may be one of the most important decisions you will make. Choosing the right hosting company doesn’t just affect your bottom line, but will also affect your site speed, your allotted email addresses, and the server technology that dictates successful integration with WordPress. At Red Rocket, we use a company called Blue Host which allows for unlimited data transfer, email addresses and databases. Plus their system works flawlessly with WordPress. Combine this with excellent customer service, working with Bluehost saves time and money while simultaneously providing unmatched features.

Static Content: Static content refers to web content that cannot be edited by a user via a change in the database. Often times, this content is referred to as hard-coded, meaning the developer has written the content directly into an HTML document. In the web development process, it is important to define which content should be static and which content should be dynamic because if content is static, the user will not be able to edit the content through WordPress or any other content management system. It is common that static content is considered, “cheaper to produce,”  as the coding required is not as intensive as the coding required to make an area editable/dynamic.

Dynamic Content: Dynamic content refers to content that can be edited through a change in a database. This means a user can edit the content through the use of a content management system such as WordPress.

Web Application: A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. Web applications often require in depth planning, development and testing before going live. A custom Web Application are generally very time consuming and expensive to produce.

E-Commerce: Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, or e-business consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. In WordPress, basic e-commerce can be accomplished through the use and customization of popular plugins such as WP-Ecommerce. However, many times a custom e-commerce web application must be developed to meet specific goals, such as sale and promotional requirements.

3. Questions. Don’t forget the obvious way to get people to engage.  Ask them questions.  People love it when you ask them about themselves.  It makes us feel important when someone asks about what we think.  Ask them for their opinion.  It can be as simple as “Cream or no cream?” or how about “Who do you think will win the Superbowl next year?”  And don’t forget about hot topics that get people fired up like politics.  “Do you think Obama will be re-elected?”  Those sorts of questions really engage viewers and readers will often feed off of the other comments that they read.  Before you know it, one question can lead to hundreds of comments.

Even better is the ability to edit multiple files at the same time – here’s how. Select the images you want to add your metadata to and click on the IPTC tab. This will open a drop down menu that will present you with a variety of fields – just add your data to each of the fields and click the little check mark in the lower right-hand corner of the tab.

That’s it – you’ve successfully added metadata to your JPG images without even opening a single file.

Now you can focus on that website design rather than poor image quality.