Six ways to enhance your firm's responsive website performance

Six ways to enhance your firm’s responsive website performance

Mobile devices have forced designers and developers to rethink how they approach building webpages. Smaller screens demand layouts that are lean, simple and scalable. Designers must identify the most critical content first and design around that content. This changes the way pages are created for all screen sizes, encouraging more streamlined experiences from mobile to desktop.

Today, over half of all digital media consumption is done on tablets or smartphones.

People expect seamless transitions as they access websites across a variety...

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How to use negative space to enhance user experience

white-spaceOne of the challenges of website design is combining many disparate items like text, pictures, links and illustrations into a harmonious page. If a layout is not well thought out, even the most beautiful design elements will suffer from poor display.

Some websites succumb to the misconception that visitors must be given as much information as possible as soon as they land on a page, which leads to an attempt to...

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Making less do more for your website

simplicitySimplicity can be difficult. Simplifying your schedule, your inbox, your wardrobe, your clutter, your to-do list: none of this comes easily. The same is true for design. Many people will say that they want a clean layout with simple navigation and good use of white space, but often they will balk at implementing the resulting design. There is an instinct to fill space – with text, or textures, or gradients,...

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Five tips for getting the most engagement out of your Pinterest pictures

After a year of gathering data about how people interact with images on Pinterest, the team at Curalate believes they can predict whether or not your pictures will get noticed. Curate is a social media image analytics company that counsels businesses on how to optimize pictures for maximum engagement on Pinterest and Instagram. They have been steadily amassing a database of millions of images, which includes physical details about the picture - like colors, textures, aspect ratio and saturation...

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Featured website illustrates how to create designs that last

busaviationThis month's featured website is businessaviationcounsel.com, which was designed for aviation transaction attorney Stewart H. Lapayowker. Mr. Lapayowker's site is being highlighted due to a combination of its layout, look and feel, and longevity. This project was completed in 2009, and aside from one programming update necessary to remove an outdated Flash-based menu, it has remained relevant without the need for a design overhaul for the last...

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Google’s How Search Works site outlines the search process and offers live spam screenshots

searchGoogle has launched a website called How Search Works, which takes users through the process of search from crawling and indexing to displaying results. From a purely design standpoint, the site is a beautiful example of how modern coding techniques can create a completely interactive, animated and Flash-free website. It uses plenty of white space, large text and simple graphics to explain the indexing and search process....

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Design Terms: What is Grid Layout and is it Right for You?

gridTwo websites that have a very different look and feel may, at their cores, be structured in much the same way. Before adding graphics, colors and text, you must decide what type of layout best fits your needs. Layouts can be fluid, fixed (more on that later), grid, one, two or three column. Grid layouts are popular because they can support a lot of information and content without looking unorganized....

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Lessons learned from a day of competitor research

openResearching your competitors is an important aspect of both the website design and marketing process. Keeping an eye on what others in your field (and locality) are doing helps provide important insight as to what works and what doesn't. It also helps you avoid making the mistake of marketing your firm in a way that is too similar to that of other attorneys in you area. If your website looks...

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Do not let outdated advice stand in the way of good website design

monitorsOld web design advice is everywhere. You can tell a lot about the age of a list of website design tips is by what is being recommended. This, of course, is not the fault of the original author; screen resolution and browser usage statistics, along with programming languages, are constantly changing. At some point down the road, this post, like others before it, will be obsolete. When sifting through the plethora of...

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