Create Hover Effect on Image in Squarespace

You can find the latest simple tutorial to change an image on hover in Squarespace over on our website http://bit.ly/1Who93K

User Experience Theory to turn your Website Visitors into Customers

I wanted to try and help you to visualise this concept which will probably result in you thinking how obvious it sounds but I am amazed by the amount of websites which still do not follow this principle.

Top Google Chrome Extensions for Web Designers 2016

I am a big fan of Chrome and I now find that I could not live without some of these extensions for my web design projects. Here are the ones that I have currently got installed:

How to use a custom share button on your Squarespace site

I was getting frustrated by the same old facebook and twitter share buttons and most of the tools out there are either very standardised or complicated. I wanted to use my own style share buttons for some of my web designs. I have aimed the tutorial at Squarespace websites but the principles should work with any site.

How Much Does it Cost to Have A Website Designed

What does a website cost?

You wont find many designers who will have set prices for website design and there is a good reason for that. 

Each project is so different with so many different options that the designer can use that most designers (including myself) want to give you the best price but also the best options for your project. In order to determine this, we need to look at each project individually and quote on the job.

Speaking from a my business, as a rule of thumb, a website design will usually cost between £500 & £2000 depending on what is required. Start-up businesses will usually have a limited cashflow which is why I also offer monthly payment options to spread the cost as it is in my interest too that your website is successful and in turn, your business.

Why hire a designer when you can build a website yourself?

There are many platforms out there such as Wix, Squarespace and WordPress etc. that let you build your website on a template. These are very good services and I use Squarespace for a lot of my smaller projects. I would encourage you all to have a go at building a website as even if you don’t get exactly what you are after, you will have learnt a lot more about websites than you knew before.

When you hire a designer, you are asking somebody to design your website. They may use a template based platform to keep the costs down, however, they will use a lot of design skills to maximise your conversion rate. Things like colour psychology to reflect the feeling that best suits your type of customer, complimentary colours for ‘Calls to Action‘, fonts that suit the brand, placing of key information and ensuring that you are giving the information in various forms to cater for the different types of customer. They will also ensure that your website is responsive to all devices and that there is a consistent flow to the site. These are just some the reasons that you hire web designers such as myself. We haven’t even talked about the image selections, infographics and manipulation of these.

Summary

There is a lot more to designing a website than just placing elements onto a template but by offering plans like monthly payments to help with start-ups, I hope that more people are able to have their sites professionally designed and stand out online.

If you would like to find out more about the monthly payment schemes or just want a free quote for a design, please get in touch.

Using Squarespace for Ecommerce Review

As my followers are probably aware, I am a big fan of Squarespace and it accounts for over 50% of all of my web designs for clients. I still feel that Squarespace is best suited to brochure style websites but it does have a feature for eCommerce which we are going to have a look at.

Google rolling out Material Design web-wide

Since 2014, Google has been redesigning its apps and services according to its own Material Design principles. Yesterday it announced on its design blog that an upcoming release of its Chrome browser (version 49.2) will adopt Material Design as its default rendering. Critically the new version of Chrome—dubbed Chrome MD—will override site-defined CSS in deference…

via Google rolling out Material Design web-wide — Webdesigner Depot

Essential design trends, March 2016

One of the great things about looking at trends each month is catching a glimpse of what designers are experimenting with. In particular, you start to see a distinct crossover of elements that you might have missed at first glance.

That exact thing happened with this month’s collection. Note all the yellow and gold tones. Even in picking out examples of great work for other trends, websites with these hues kept creeping in.

Read what’s trending in design this month at http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2016/03/essential-design-trends-march-2016/

Squarespace vs WordPress

Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages and are aiming at different markets. I found this very good comparison that should help you make your decision.

http://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/squarespace-vs-wordpress/

Is There a Link Between Self Employment & Insomnia?

It’s a genuine question that I am investigating!

I am sat writing this blog post at 4am after around one and a half hours sleep which seems to be normal for me at the moment. Admittedly, I may doze off at around 6pm for an hour tonight but these habits seem to have become prominent since starting my own web design business.