Month: October 2015

8 Tips for Creating a Great Website Footer

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Often time’s people tend to forget about the importance of their websites footer. The footer of your website is one of the most important locations on your webpage. Although this area of your website may not be designed impressively, your visitors look for the footer in search of important information. It’s vital that you don’t neglect your footer when planning for a web design project.

So, what elements should you incorporate in your footer? How can you go about keeping your footer organized and seamless without over designing? The following tips include ways to create a great footer without it being obtrusive:

  1. Keep It Clean- When dealing with lots of information, you must make the design simple. This way it’s easy for your visitors to find the information they’re seeking and extract it efficiently as they need. Make sure your design has purpose, fresh content and clean spacing.
  2. Provide Links- Two of the most important links on your website are “Contact Us” and “About Us”. When visitors land on your webpage they typically want to know more about your company and its members. So, your footer must be linked to these pages to provide the best service.
  3. Basic Contact Info- Besides including “Contact Us” into your footer, you can add your contact information, like your physical address, emails address and phone number. Try including an icon that offers auto dial, emailing or a site map with your location.
  4. Arrange by Importance- The footer should contain some sort of hierarchy of the elements within the area. Your information should be divided in columns or rows and arranged by relevant important information like contact information, social media, links, etc.
  5. Include Copyright Notice- Including a Copyright Notice is extremely important to your security and can save you from facing many problems. You can copyright your work by including a copyright notice. This statement includes the copyright symbol, name of the copyright owner, and the year it was created.
  6. Include Call To Action- All of the best website design include a call to action, and many businesses find that including one last call to action in your footer can be the extra nudge your visitors need to sign up for newsletters, subscribe to blogs, or to send an email requesting a quote. Make sure to keep your footers call to action brief and straight to-the-point.
  7. Contrast and Readability- Your footer is typically small in size and much of your info is kept in that small block. That being said, you must make sure to balance the background and contrast of the text to make it readable. Also, color, brightness and contrast must be taken into consideration.
  8. Use Graphic Elements- Many times footers are just block of text. Add logos or graphic elements for added visual interest, but be careful not to overdo the small space with too many elements. So rather than spelling out “Follow me on Facebook/Twitter” include icons for these outlets.

Your footer is an extremely important part of your web design. Make sure you include the right mix of information, design elements and usability to get the most out of your footer in every web design project.

If you’re ready to take your company to the next level with a beautiful website, call Jelly Websites in Corona, CA at 951-371-9327 or visit our website at www.jellywebsites.com to learn about the services we offer.

Proudly serving Corona, Riverside, Chino, Ontario, Anaheim, Irvine, Tustin, Yorba Linda, Fullerton and all surrounding areas.

Is Infinite Scrolling Right for Your Website? | Web Design

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Infinite scrolling has become an increasingly popular trend in web design. The design of infinite scrolling is as simple as it sounds, it displays your content and allows your viewers to keep scrolling without having to stop. So is this a trend that you see working for your website or does is sound like something you would like to avoid?

Like any trend, infinite scrolling had its pros and cons. But that all depends on the type and goals of your website. Infinite scrolling is a type of web interaction technique that continuously loads content as your visitor scrolls though your site rather than having to click on links. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest are the best examples of infinite scrolling. However, many other sites have taken notice to this trend and implemented the design into their sites as well. Infinite scrolling isn’t for every website, so before you decide to join in on this trend I would implore you to inform yourself of the pros and cons listed below:

PROS:

  • Great for Touch Screen Devices- Today most mobile devise and tablets are made with touch technology and it’s can be difficult to tap those tiny page links, which is why infinite scrolling solves this problem.
  • Great for Visuals- One of the best way to display high quality images and image content is by implementing infinite scrolling into your web design. Great examples of how visual oriented websites benefits from infinite scrolling include Pinterest and Flickr.
  • Quick and Simple Browsing- Infinite pages are typically faster than regular webpages. The reason for this is because as the user scrolls down the webpage more content automatically loads on the same page which eliminates the need for clicking on links and reloading new pages every time.
  • Keeps Users Engaged and Curious- Infinite scrolling tends to trigger automatic responses based on curiosity and ease which keeps the users engaged while waiting for new content to load. People are wanting to be constantly entertain and not disrupted by having to click a “load more’ button and then having to wait. Infinite scrolling takes advantage of that.

CONS:

  • Navigation Problems- One of the basic UX principles states that users need to always know where they are on your website. This is key for website usability. In the case of having an infinite scrolling page it can be quite difficult to understand where you are on the webpage at a certain point. In addition, when clicking on a certain link and then wanting to return to where you left off, you are brought back to the top of the webpage.
  • No Skipping- A huge advantage of paginated content is when you need to skip the first 10 pages and go the 11th page you can do so. This is impossible with infinite scrolling. You just have to scroll down to find something that interests you.
  • Footer Problem- This is a big issues with ecommerce websites. If you’ve made an online purchase before you know exactly where the important links are located: in the footer. Now imagine you want to visit the “shipping information” on an infinite scrolling page. This can be a big hassle when a link could be just a quick click away.
  • Overwhelming Content- It’s great to have a lot of quality information on your website. But when there’s infinite content loading every second users may start to feel overwhelmed and out of control.

Infinite scrolling isn’t for every website. So before choosing to implement this web design trend into your website make sure it’s the right choice for you. For more information on web design, contact Jelly Websites in Corona, CA at 951-371-9327 or visit our website at www.jellywebsites.com to learn about the services we offer.

Proudly serving Corona, Riverside, Chino, Ontario, Anaheim, Irvine, Tustin, Yorba Linda, Fullerton and all surrounding areas.