Oli Gardner shows how fundamental design principals can be used to increase conversions on landing pages, breaking it down into two important aspects of conversion centered design: persuasive design for lead gen forms and persuasive design for calls-to-action (CTAs).
Category: Web Design
Image Techniques for Creating Depth in Web Design
We live in a three-dimensional world, something that designers are trying to recreate in web design every day. The element of depth can add a greater touch of reality to certain design projects. The key to simulating reality on the 2D screen is by creating depth using images. Carrie Cousins demonstrated how this can be accomplished in a variety of ways, from the photography itself, to layering of images, manipulation and the use of special effects.
10 Creative Techniques Using CSS3 Box Shadow
A great list of box shadow code snippets with demos and explanation for each technique:
1. Fixed Top Toolbar
2. Sub-Navigation Dropdown
3. Glossy Shadow Button
4. Notifications Flyout Menu
5. Apple Page Wrapper
6. Apple Content Box
7. Featured Links
8. Framed Images
9. Glowing Input Fields
10. Elastic Shadow Buttons
Normalize.css
Normalize.css is a small CSS file created by Nicolas Gallagher and Jon Neal. It provides better cross-browser consistency in the default styling of HTML elements, preserves useful browser defaults rather than erasing them, corrects bugs and common browser inconsistencies. It’s a modern, HTML5-ready, alternative to the traditional CSS reset.
WordPress Responsive Design
WordPress Responsive Design is a nice collection of tools, tutorials, themes and frameworks that make it easier and quicker to implement responsive design in WordPress.
Applying Macrotypography For A More Readable Web Page
Any application of typography can be divided into two arenas: micro and macro. Understanding the difference between the two is especially useful when crafting a reading experience, because it allows the designer to know when to focus on legibility and when to focus on readability.
This article by Nathan Ford focuses mostly on a few simple macrotypographic techniques — with a dash of micro — and on how to combine them all to build a more harmonious, adaptable and, most importantly, readable Web page.
Why We Shouldn’t Make Separate Mobile Websites
Bruce Lawson gives a great explanation for what I feel is true:
“The vital point is that you never know better than your users what content they want.”
Absolutely! I’s one web no matter which device a user got, it’s not the designers or developer’s job to decide which version of a web site that user gets. Akin to taking control over one’s browser, serving a separate site to a mobile user does not sound right. I can see removing embellishments like extra graphics, slideshows, and so on, but to remove or alter content and features because the site owner “feels” it’s not important on a smartphone (or a feature phone for that matter) is a whole different matter.
Bruce also discusses real life constraints that make a separate mobile web site a necessity and inevitable downsides of this setup like inability to reliably sniff mobile browsers, leaving mobile users with incomplete experience if they never access the web with a desktop, and in the end cites The W3C Mobile Web best practices:
“One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users irrespective of the device they are using. However, it does not mean that exactly the same information is available in exactly the same representation across all devices. The context of mobile use, device capability variations, bandwidth issues and mobile network capabilities all affect the representation. Furthermore, some services and information are more suitable for and targeted at particular user contexts.”
At best, it means richer experience for more sophisticated devices that have less bandwidth constraints, not revamping a desktop web site to suit some theory of what’s better for the mobile web.
Style Tiles
Samantha Warren came up with a client-friendly way to present the look and feel of a future website that is less puzzling than a mood board and not as precise as a comp image. This is something I definitely want to try for the next project.
Ethan Marcotte refers to static comps during the responsive design process as a “catalog of assumptions” Style Tiles are the perfect complement to that catalog, whether it be in place of comps or to reinforce visual themes. Style Tiles don’t imply dimensions nor device; only that the design will be digital.
Samantha Warren
styletil.es
Want to know more? Read Samantha’s article about Style Tiles on A List Apart.
Removing Stumbling Blocks In Mobile Forms
Robert Brauer discusses tripping hazards that delay so many users from filling out forms on a portable device. He talks about design strategies that help \facilitate a safe and quick stroll through forms for mobile users. The goal is to allow people to navigate through the form, achieving the quickest possible success with the least necessary effort.
Responsive text
Some websites now contain ‘responsive images’. These scale (or crop) depending upon your screen’s viewing area, so the image sizes remain appropriate whether you’re looking at the website on a mobile phone, or on a huge flat screen monitor.
This is an example of responsive text. The amount of textual detail scales relative to your screen size.
The effect is achieved using simple HTML class names and CSS media queries which show or hide the content depending upon the current screen width.