At Smarter Searches, we do the occasional website redesign. Even when we don’t, we always recommend that in the grand scheme of growing your business and your presence on the web, it helps to have a beautiful and user-friendly website. We can do all the right things to help customers
Usability and User Experience When a website’s usability is simple, easy, navigable, and obvious, more conversions (a.k.a converting site visitors into paying customers) occur. Websites are set up to display your trade, craft, products, or services, so it makes sense to do everything you can to make sure your visitors
Minimalism is a design movement in which artists and designers eliminate non-essential forms, features, or concepts in an effort to expose the essence or identity of a subject. Minimalism can also be considered any design or style that uses the simplest and fewest elements necessary to create the maximum effect. While this
Detail and decoration are like a double-edged sword. One one hand, visual decoration can make your site unique, personal and creative. However, in some cases it can be tacky, overwhelming and land in the area of kitsch. Kitsch can be defined as something gaudy, overdone, melodramatic, tacky, mass-produced or low-quality. Think of the
“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak” – John Berger, Ways of Seeing The essence of this book is that we “see” before we read, speak, and walk. Concepts and design should be well crafted because it is the first thing someone will notice and “see” about
Content is the essence of your work; it is what is being depicted, and it is a distinct aspect of art and design that can cross over into web design to help any designer create a unified site. Content is also the emotional or intellectual message, the expression, essential meaning, significance or aesthetic
Line is one of the simplest and most versatile elements of design. Being a multi-faceted element of design, line can be considered an extension of a point or a point set in motion, a series of adjacent points, a connection or implied connection between points, or the effect of the edge of an
Getting viewers to focus on your most important information and visuals involves a working relationship between the elements of balance, visual weight and focal points. Balance is the equal distribution of weight or force among visual units and is created by a variety of design elements working together. These elements can create: symmetrical balance-
Web design frequently uses a design theory called the Gestalt Principle. It means “unified whole” and refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920’s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes to achieve visual unity through the use of
Karl Aspelund’s book “The Design Process” is all about creative strategies and exercises to stimulate a designer’s process. The author says, “Designing is about forming ideas, planning and explaining the execution of those ideas, and making choices based on the evolution of those ideas that will lead to an end
