New Web Design Trends Making Themselves Known in 2012

According to a research reported in the Rake Mark news feed, a visitor only needs 50 milliseconds to make a decision about your website. Even though we are still in February, this web design revelation is shaping web design and some new trends are emerging in 2012.

‘Design Once Display Everywhere’ Web Design

With a raft of new devices hitting the market every year all with different screen sizes and abilities to display a web page, it’s important that the design of your web page can handle all the different mobile devices that might be displayed on it.

This type of ‘Design Once Display Everywhere’ Web Design is being referred to as Responsive web design, creating a fully fluid website, with layouts and images adapted to the size of the screen the page is being viewed on.

Sarah Brassington of Rake Mark, Web Design Staffordshire said, “Mobile users are making a bigger part of everyone’s visitor numbers and the number of mobile users is only going to go up”

Some form of mobile strategy needs to be on place for your business website. You can look for a ‘responsive web design’ strategy or look for a mainstream / mobile site strategy. Which you go for depends on your budget.

Clean / Minimalist Web Design Technique

Simplicity is the key. Effective uses of whitespace, strip things back to what you need and no more.

With the 50 millisecond rule more businesses are moving away from overly complex designs and crowded pages, simpler cleaner designs are being requested more and more. This doesn’t mean cutting back on anything other than items that are unnecessary. Images, animation and other design elements to give the required visual clues and add impact are still there, only anything that doesn’t add to the page is being removed.

Sarah believes that the clean & Minimalist web design is becoming popular due to faster loading times and increased visitor usability.

With the web page weight down pages load faster and users can find the information they are looking for more easily” she said. ,

With less clutter on the page, finding the information you need becomes a simpler task.

Using Infographics to Display Data on the Web

An infographic is a way to visually share information. The graphical display gives more information than if the data were simply provided.

Sarah Brassington said “The infographic made its way onto the web last year and is gaining in popularity. With new design packages available, creating infographics will become as simple as creating Excel Charts.

Many argue that then humble graph or chart is a primitive inforgraphic, other that digital charts and graphs were simply the forerunner. Whatever your point of view these visually stunning images that help us to visualise information like never before are set to become more popular through 2012 and beyond.

Whilst not impacting the design of the website itself, the Infographic is set to revolutionize the way we view and consume information.

Having harnessed a lot of popularity throughout 2011, the Infographic is a bright, enticing and uniquely user-friendly way to communicate information to the end consumer.

In this example of an infographic comparing the Titanic sinking to that of the Concordia, the fact it is written in Portuguese has little effect on the understanding.
Wed Design using Infographic

Web Design into 2012 and Beyond

Director and head of design at Rake Mark Web Design in Staffordshire, Sarah Brassington has seen a number of design fads come and go, but these new trends are being driven by required function rather than fashion.

“For example, the adapting designs for mobile devices is born out of a need to satisfy the growing army of mobile browsers, rather than a fad that will fade in time.” She said

Whether these web design trends will become new forces in the world of web design remains to be seen.

New Staffordshire Arborist Training Company Launch Their Website

Staffordshire arborist trainer, Ian Morgan, launched his new promotional arborist training website today. The new website provides a depth of information regarding the wide range of tree care and arboriculture courses that the new arb training company provides.

Based in Staffordshire on the fringes of Cannock Chase, Ian feels this is the perfect location to run his arb courses and manage his new arborist business. Ian is well known within the arb industry for his high quality training ability and has been training students to climb and care for trees for a good number of years now.

All training courses are designed to train candidates to a level above and beyond the standards required to pass the relevant NPTC assessments and all trainers are experienced in the latest equipment and techniques used in the arboricultural industry.

All the popular arborist courses are run on a regular basis. For example CS 30, Chainsaw maintenance and cross-cutting and CS 31, the felling of small trees training course along with CS 38/39/40/41 etc are all available throughout the year. They also run courses for the utility arborist industry for people working adjacent to overhead power lines up to and including 400KV. The UA1 to UA5 training courses and qualifications will satisfy the criteria for most network electricity companies.

Ian Morgan Arb Training also offers a number of other supplementary courses. For example they run first aid courses, Safe and correct use of chippers, stump grinders, brush cutters and pole saws. Ian and his team of trainers can also provide training for the safe and correct use of Mobile Elevating Work Platforms (or MEWPS) as well as manual handling and a wide range of other industry related areas.

Ian and the team also provide a LOLER inspection service, being able to inspect all climbing and rigging kits, and produce all the necessary paperwork for the operator to complete on a weekly basis so as to be compliant with the regulations.

All of Ian’s trainers and assessors are experienced in the industry and have a wealth of knowledge and tips to pass on to candidates to make their job safer and more efficient.

You can book any of the wide range of arborist and forestry training courses or find out more by telephoning 01785 330377 or you can find out more by visiting the brand new website, http://www.ianmorganarb.com. The team are happy to help you find the right course for you, today.

Ian Morgan Arb’s new website was designed by Staffordshire Web Design Company, Rake Mark Web Design. Lead web designer, Sarah Brassington, worked in the natural colours and shapes of the industry providing a solid brand with a new logo and naturally clean and fresh design. To find out how Rake Mark Web Design in Stafford can help your business find success on the web then call Sarah and the team on 01785 256 222

Staffordshire Web Design Firm to offer Email Marketing in the UK

Rake Mark, the Staffordshire Web Design Company, have today announced that they are intending to launch an email marketing service for UK customers. This bold new journey for the web design firm in Stafford is the result of frustration experienced by existing web design customers who have struggled to find a company that can provide the services they need at a price they can afford.

Philip Brassington, Director at Rake Mark Web Design and project leader on the Rake Mail project, was asked by a number of web design customers if he knew of a company that could offer supported email marketing services at a reasonable price.

He found that either the companies and services on the market often had either high upfront fees or large ongoing maintenance costs, or else they were simply priced to high for each email to make it an affordable option for

“There really is a huge gap in the market for a simple, affordable email marketing solution that is properly supported for small to medium businesses.”

Exploiting gaps in the market has been the hall mark of Rake Mark’s success over the last five years. Offering affordable web design packages to local businesses was the initial offering that set the web design firm on the road to success. Very few companies were prepared to discuss costing on their website at the time, but Rake Mark Web Design pioneered up front and transparent pricing with no hidden fees.

“Affordable Web Design was a huge market and our transparent pricing policy earned us a huge amount of business. Our competitors often tried to hide fees within the process. Our approach was a breath of fresh air” Mr Brassington said.

Many companies quickly followed suit and started offering fixed price web design packages and this has now become the norm. Rake Mark still carve out their own niche by focusing on the huge numbers of local businesses they can visit and work with offering their web design service on a one on one basis.

The trend in offering first class services at affordable prices to local businesses continued with their affordable e-commerce web design products.

Although Rake Mark proudly provide web design and support services for companies on the south coast of England and as far north as Ayrshire in Scotland they are predominantly a Staffordshire and West Midlands web design company as most projects require some kind of time with the client.

The email marketing product, will however, be available to businesses and organisations across the UK. It will truly be a UK wide product, a first for the Stafford based web designers.

“This new email marketing product will be available throughout the UK and will be our first truly national business” said Mr Brassington.

Although the email marketing will be available nationally, it won’t be available internationally. The directors at Rake Mark are firm on that point, ensuring that they support their customers properly. Mr Brassington is clear that stretching a business too thin can only lead to a drop in the quality of customer service.

“We best serve local businesses with our affordable web design service and the email marketing product will be aimed at UK businesses only. We know how to server our customers best and we know where the boundaries lie to providing an efficient business.” Said Mr Brassington

It will be a UK email marketing product only available to UK companies. In short the slogan is Email Marketing UK!

More information on the Email Marketing UK project will be released by Rake Mark in the coming weeks and months. Updates on the progress can be found on the RakeMark and RakeMail twitter feeds. Anyone who wishes to register their interest can do so by emailing Philip Brassington at philip.brassington@rakemark.com or calling 01785 256 222.

Create Web Design Impact with Stunning Headlines

In my last article I gave you a framework for powering up your web design using headlines. Most web pages have a headline and it’s important that you use your headlines to maximum effect. In this article I’ll give you Three Headline Strategies to Maximise Your Web Design.

Your web designer will keep banging on about how you have 8 seconds to grab their attention. This isn’t necessarily true, according to some studies it’s less than this!

In order to grab their attention it’s important that your web design provides visual clues. I discussed this in the previous article. In short by ‘visual clues’ I’m talking about anything you can see gives a visual indication of what the page is about. This could be (among others) images, animation, bold text or a headline.

Headlines are important, as we’ve discussed, but headlines come in different styles. Here are three different headline styles that will help you grab your web visitors attention and encourage your readers to read on.

The ‘How to’ Headline

The how to headline is great for articles that offer a single piece of exciting information, like ‘How to increase your sales by 200%’, or ‘How to lose 10 pounds in 10 days’

These headline types have great s success on the web, especially if the page has the ‘how to’ headline as the page title as well. The searcher finds your ‘how to’ article in Google, clicks the link and sees the headline straight away. They know they’re in the right place and they’ll read on.

DO: Put an important part of the ‘how to’ in the first paragraph else these types of visitors will bounce straight off your web page.

DON’T: Use this technique to often or else your website does start to sound like an American cheesy TV infomercial.

The ‘Question’ Headline

The question headline works well when your article solves a problem. Your headline can then ask the reader how great it would be if only they could solve that problem. This headline technique can work with similar articles that the ‘how to’ headline works with.

For example you could ask, ‘Wouldn’t you like to lose 10 pounds in 10 days?’ or ‘Isn’t there an easier way to lose weight quickly?’

Marketers will always tell you to consider the inherent drama of your product or service. Why is your product being made and bought and sold? Identify the drama within your product and work it into your piece.

Stick to the inherent drama of your piece and the question headline will work a treat, but again, you can end up sounding like an infomercial if you overuse the technique.

The Command Headline

Your command headline zeros in on the key benefit that your product offers. The inherent drama is about the feelings and emotions that are brought to the surface when your product is discussed, but the command headline focuses on that single undeniable benefit that your product carry’s.

A couple of examples might be “Get the manageable hair you deserve” or “Don’t Worry About Breakdowns, Get Roadside Assist Today!”

It could be that your product guarantees great results, better looking hair or trouble free motoring, whatever the benefit is, identify it and work it into your next headline.

About the Web Designer

Phil Brassington is a Staffordshire Web Designer who is a director at Rake Mark Solutions, a Staffordshire Web Design company. He graduated from Staffordshire University with a first class honors degree in Computing Science, the first member of his family to earn a university degree.

He lives in Stafford with his wife, three kids and a rabbit named Flopsy.

Rake Mark Web Design has been providing web design in Staffordshire and across the UK for over five years.

The 8 Second Web Design Rule is History

Visitors to your Website will judge your web design and make a first impression in ‘the blink of an eye’ according to researchers at Carleton University. Staffordshire web designers have long stated on this forum that the general rule of thumb is the eight seconds to draw in your visitor, but this research appears to make this web design rule a piece of history.

According to the research, website visitors will form their first impression in as little as 50 milliseconds (only one twentieth of a second) making this an instant judgement, made as quickly as the eye can take in the information, a gut instinct as much as anything else.

The research consisted of volunteers being shown 50 millisecond glimpses of static web page content. The volunteers then had to rate the websites in terms of aesthetic appeal.

Talking to magazine website, Web Site Optimization, one of the studies researchers was asked if the speed of response was cognitive or was it a physiological and emotional response.

Dr Lindgarrds responded that is was unlikely to be cognitive, saying “[It] seems to depend on your age. When a group of high school kids saw the slides for 50 millisecond they were able to discern much more detail than were older people. People taking part in our experiments were not able to see details, so they had no clue about the informational content. Hence, for adults, this response is unlikely to involve cognition.”

New Rules for Staffordshire Web Designers

So do web designers in Staffordshire and across the UK need to ditch the 8 second rule and design to the 50 millisecond rule. That is perhaps a little premature.

Philip Brassington, a web design and web marketing expert from Staffordshire said that the research came as much as a surprise to him and his colleagues as it had to the researchers

We have long promoted the eight second rule for web design, asking clients to judge their web design based on an eight second impression” he said

Businesses that keep design in house as part of another department may need to think again in light of the new research according to the Staffordshire Web Designer,

“With an initial judgement made as soon as the information is received by the eye it is even more important that your web design is spot on” he said

However Mr Brassington urges caution and calm for businesses and web site owners before rushing out and spending money on changing the look and feel of their websites.

“The images used were very much two extremes and the researchers did use only very high quality website and also very low quality website images for their research.” he told us.

Philip Brassington is a director at Rake Mark Web Design Staffordshire and can be contacted on 01785 256 222. He has worked as a web designer and developer since graduating Staffordshire University. He lives in Stafford with his wife, three kids and a rabbit named flopsy.

Write Stunning Headlines to Create Web Design Impact and Increase Visitor Conversion

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you have only a few seconds to grab your website visitors attention before they leave and and look elsewhere. During this time they’ll look at the web page for visual clues that this website is going to give them what they need. One of the best visual clues you can give is a well written headline to grab their attention and generate interest.

Your headline is powerful and because of this should be given some time and consideration. When I’m writing blogs I don’t usually put a huge amount of effort into the title (which subsequently becomes the headline), I spend a bit more time when I’m writing an article for wider distribution and I tend to agonise over headlines when its being incorporated into a web design.

Given the subject I did a couple of different versions of the headline for this article. What do you think?

Incorporating Visual Clues into your Web Design

This first ‘web design’ impression is so important that, although it’s a bit off message, it’s well worth a two minute re-cap. By ‘visual clues’ I’m talking about anything you can see gives a visual indication of what the page is about.

So if its a page about making meatloaf, then a nice picture of a completed meatloaf above the fold would help. This could (or should?) be accompanied by a text rich headline. In this case it could be anything as simple as ‘Meatloaf Recipe’

Power Up Your Website’s Headlines

My ‘Meatloaf Recipe’ headline would give you the right idea, namely telling your visitor that they’re on a web page that contains a meatloaf recipe, but would it grab the readers attention? Would it build any genuine desire to find out more.

How about, ‘Five Simple Steps to the Tastiest Meatloaf’ or ‘Quick and Simple Meatloaf Recipe’. This headline, in tandem with your main image, would give the visitor a clear idea of what the page is about. Now assuming that the image is of a lovely tasty meatloaf, then they are going to be almost able to taste it.

Use powerful descriptive language so that the reader can visualise what the web page is about from the headline. Build a mental picture that draws them in, use descriptive words in all of your headlines.

You’ve now grabbed their attention and a genuine desire to find out more about your great meatloaf recipe (or about your fab range of bathroom suites or even web design or whatever service and products that you sell)

I’m sure you could come up with some even better headlines for your website than the ones I’ve come up with and this is an exercise that could vastly improve your web site effectiveness and conversion.

I would whole heartily recommend that you take ten minutes per page and consider if your headline is really doing the job you want it to.

Don’t Compromise Your Web Design for the SEO Consultant

Your headline will typically be placed inside ‘header tags’ and because important information goes into your header tags then Google also places a high value on what goes into your header tags. For this reason your Search engine optimisation consultant will have some specific ideas about what he wants in there.

If it isn’t going to sell, then resist them.

It’s their job to get you up the Google Rankings. It’s your job to sell the product once they land on your web page.

There are tips and tricks (white hat techniques that Google is happy with) that you can employ on the web page to make everyone happy, but that’s another topic for another day. The important thing in this sidebar is that your headline is one of your key weapons to increase dwell time on them page and to then convert that visitor into a customer (and subsequently into profits)

Fulfilling the Promise of the Headline

Once you’ve written your headline then you have to make sure that the rest of the web page lives up the fantastic headline your written.

You’ve worked hard to grab their attention and now they’re interested in what you have to say, so make sure that it gets said in a style that matches the headline.

Although I really don’t think that I’ve done this myself yet in this article, I’m at my own self imposed word count and will continue in a part two, which I’ll publish over the weekend.

Until then, budding web designers, be creative with your headlines.

Web Design in Stafford

Phil Brassington is a director at Rake Mark Solutions a company that provides web design in Stafford.

He graduated from Staffordshire University with a first class honors degree in Computing Science, the first member of his family to graduate university. He lives in Stafford with his wife, three kids and a rabbit named Flopsy. Rake Mark Web Design have been providing web design across Staffordshire for over five years.