Why Should Your Website Have a Blog?

When you visit a website for a company, with the exception of e-commerce sites, you will likely find a blog on the website. As a Chicago web design firm, we have a blog on our main site, check it out. And this goes for many other marketing agencies, advertising agencies, PR firms, and other businesses in the creative sector and world.

However, why would you want to have one? We do we? Why do other companies? Here are several reasons:

• You can showcase the knowledge and expertise of employees. 
• Archive tips, knowledge, and other helpful information. Any good information you publish on the blog will stay there. 
• It's a great place to promote discussion and cooperation. When you publish a blog, people and comment on it and generate discussion. People are much more willing to speak up over the internet than face to face. 
• It generates fresh content on your site. Search engines like to see fresh content published on your site for indexing, a blog is a great way to accomplish that. This is a big help for your search engine optimization. 

However, you have to have a good strategy for your blog; before you start, answer these questions:

• Why are we doing the blog?
• What will we post?
• Who's the audience?
• Standards and guidelines for posts?
• Consequences for violations?
• Who will post?
• When will we post?

Running a blog is a lot of work but it is worth it and in the right hands, it is effective. If you know you need a blog on your site but do not have the skill or time, then hire a professional copywriter to write the posts for you! Our team of writers will make sure to write how you'd like and stay within your comforts and all legalities. For a great website, hire a professional web designer. 

8 Things You Need to Know About Landing Pages

Every website has a landing page, it is the doorway to your website or section of your website. However, there is much to know about a landing page, according to our web design team. So let's dive in.

Is a landing page necessary? Too many people think that a landing page is only needed for an e-commerce site; however, this is not true. Every single website needs a landing page so you can direct your web visitors where to go and showcase things. A landing page is to a website as a lobby is to an office space; it has the entrance and allows people to gauge where to go without dedicating to a direction just yet. It allows you to promote things too, whether it be a product, deals, etc.

How can you make a great landing page? Well, several ways.

• Have good things to promote/sell on it. This means that your products and/or services need to be compelling enough for people to care. If your product or service stinks, then your landing page can only take it so far and you will end up with bad reviews and returns. So you might have to back track a little and make sure your product offering is good enough to build upon. 
• The proof is in the pudding. Social pudding. Getting testimonials about products and services allows you to say, "Don't take our word for it? See what these objective people thought about our product or service!" A great landing page will remove any cognitive dissonance about your product or service. It will give them all the info the consumer needs. 
• Get an endorsement. If you can have a reputable person give an endorsement, that is as good, sometimes better, than a testimonial. 
• It tells the story. You need to establish that connection with your target market and get them to understand the benefits of using your product, not just what is cool about it (the specs). Your landing page should relate to the consumer and get them to have that relationship of trust and loyalty with your brand. As a web designer, this is always something I consider when building sites and their landing pages. 
• It should be attractive. It should generate leads for sales. Here are things to consider:
• Headers and titles
• Buttons and links
• Colors, highlighted areas
• Good mix of colors but not too many. It should lead the eye downward and encourage them to take action. 
• Length of the page- Longer is generally better but it has to have good content, either way. And not too long. 
• Images

Building a good landing page is well worth the time and effort. The good thing is, you don't have to be held down by the time and effort of doing so, you can let a professional web designer build it for you. Contact Integraphix and let us build your site efficiently, artistically, and quickly. We also build sites so they are mobile-responsive and SEO friendly. 

5 Incredible Web Design TIps

The world of web design can be tough to get recognized and have real success in. The problem is that it can be easy to create websites that are too busy and complicated or just straight up boring.

Here are 5 tips that will help you create a website that is worthy of showing off to the internet world.

• Learn and adhere to fundamentals. One key factor to being a great web designer is to remember that a website should be clear and scannable. If someone can't scan the site and figure out where to go next, then it's too complicated. That being said, there are certain things you can do to help improve your odds:

• Make headlines bold and easy to read. 
• Choose a font that is easy to read. Go for practical instead of cute, if you have to choose between one over the other. 
• Make body copy as legible as you can. 
• An easy to read text. 
• If you think the font size might be too small, it is. 
• Shorter lines & small blocks of text. 

• Pick a great typeface. You will likely want to choose one that is easy to read, graphic, and with a touch of style. Like we said, if you have to choose cute OR practical, then go with practical but there are plenty of fonts that allow great practicality and a bit of style. Some designers will tell you that Helvetica Neue is a great choice. 

• Choose three colors for a palette and don't deviate. Having too many colors on a website will be a great way to make it too busy and people will leave. The color palette should be easy to choose if it is for a company or team that has a color scheme already chosen since you'll just adhere to that. The main goal is consistency. If you have your choice of colors to use, then neutral palettes with a bold accent can be a solid choice. 

• Photo size is critical. You don't want to have photos on a site that are too small, or worse, stretched. You will never be given credibility with photos on your site that are stretched. As a web designer in Chicago, I have seen lots of websites that feature photos that are ill-sized. 

• Give it some space. Your content needs to have breathing room. Don't have everything compacted together like a junked up garage. Utilize margins and breaks. It is easier on the eyes to read something with space and people are more likely to read something that is broken up. 

The rule of thumb is be aesthetically pleasing and consistent. If you need a website designed, then contact Integraphix. We are a web design company in Chicago with offices in LA, NYC, Charlotte, and Phoenix. 

Web Design Tips: Make Your Site Easy to Navigate & Read

When it comes to good web design, there is one thing to make sure you do most of all. That is to make your site easy to read and more importantly, navigate.

A great website has to be readable. Don't use language that no one will understand; make your content easy to understand, engaging, and simple. You want your content to flow from one paragraph to the next, from one page to the next, etc. It shouldn't be a pain in the butt to read.

One thing you can do is use a friendly font but not a silly font, like comic sans. Your font choice is a bigger deal than we like to realize as well. A text size of 14 pixels is often a good way to go. A nice tool to help you with this is Google Web Fonts.

As far as navigation, you should have multiple routes to each page. Have links to other pages in the site within the content. Make sure nothing in your site is more than 2 clicks away from any page. Your navigation bar should feature the prominent pages of your site, perhaps all the pages.

The rule of thumb for navigation is to remember that people are impatient and will probably not stick around to figure out your site if you make it too difficult for them. We're human, we don't like to wait.

If you are looking for a quality Chicago marketing firm that does great web design, then contact Integraphix. We are a leading Chicago web design company.

A Trend of Web Design in 2013

2013 has had a lot of changes in web design and some of the changes have been good and some of the changes have been... mediocre. Overall, whether good or "bad" changes that happen in the web design world, that still means there is progress being made. In this blog, I have compiled a list of 8 trends that happened in 2013. Some of the trends were welcomed with open arms and some were welcomed with crossed arms.

1. The first trend that was seen was the emergence of layouts that were responsive. Responsive layouts became a huge hit this year because of the continuing rise in popularity of smartphones and tablets. People look at websites on any device that gets internet, wherever they are. Think about it, if you have a smartphone or tablet; how many times in the past week or two weeks have you looked at a website on your smartphone or tablet? Maybe you were inline at a store or just sitting on a bench at a park waiting for your child who was playing on the jungle gym. As people, we love to be able to view information and see a website wherever we are. 
2. A second trend that was seen in 2013 was the rise in retina displays. The practicality of this trend was not quite as big as other trends but it sure was a big hit for those who love a good picture when looking at their phones, tablets, or computers. Perhaps the first thing you thought of when I mentioned retina displays was Apple. This year they rolled out the new laptops with retina displays and on their iPads too. 
3. A third trend for web design seen in 2013 was menu bars that are permanent. A lot of websites have moved to this feature so people can still see the tabs and search bar when scrolling down the page; as you know, in the past, when you would scroll down the page, the menu bar would disappear once you scrolled past a certain point on the page. 
4. A fourth trend seen in 2013 for web design was larger photos on websites. People love to see visuals; no matter what people look at, analyzing a visual or merely observing it lies in our core. Think about it, when you read something like a newspaper or a book, you either see a picture you can appreciate or you create the image in your mind because of the mind's love for visuals. Our eyes are drawn to pictures and scenery. 
5. A fifth trend for web design seen this year was the idea of "less is more." If you take a look at some web pages on the net, quite a few of them have moved to more simple landing pages. Along with loving visuals, the eye loves what it can understand; our eyes have a bad time when trying to sort out a complex and busy landing page, or any web page for that matter. When there are too many designs, crazy colors, links upon links upon links, etc. our eyes get exhausted. Instead, websites have moved to focus more on simple web pages that allow the eye to sort out what is going on, make the product look good, and get the sales. 
6. A sixth trend seen this year is the QR code. Now, this trend did not perform as admirably as the world forecasted but it was still a big deal for the first few months of the year. It's original intent was to create a quick and easy way for people to get to a website or wherever the QR code was linked to. 
7. A seventh trend was making social media placement on the web page a premium. This year, it was observed that social media became a necessity for websites and that the sites place the badges in prime spots on the page. As Americans, we read left to right, thus, a prime spot was to place the badges in the top left corner of the page; however, should the top left corner of the web page be taken, the top right was a welcome spot as well. 
8. An eight trend seen this year was the emergence of the tour. Have you ever gone to a website, especially after it has been reconstructed or introduced, and you get a tour of the site? You see all the spots where it says what each link or tab, etc will do for you and such. That was a biggie this year and it seems to have worked out well, however, sometimes annoying. But, it still worked so kudos to the inventor of that. 

These were just eight trends seen in web design this year, there are plenty more out there. As a Chicago web design company who loves to be creative and know the latest trends, seeing these trends happen was a fun sight. If you happen to need a website or a revamped website, consider calling Integraphix. 

4 Ways to 'Hook' Your Web Visitors

Advertising Agency :: Chicago Web Design

Issue: I'm a website visitor and just got to your website. I'm a product of the MTV generation and have an incredibly short attention span. I'm here so...what do you have for me?

Answer: You have about 7 seconds to "hook" me; to get me interested; to get me to act and move to a unique result of statistical visitors.

It worked for you right? If you read this blog, you have landed either directly on this page, or clicked through from a different page on the blog.

Now what? Well, you really should subscribe to my RSS feed, or call me with questions! Too fast? Well let's start slowly. What gives visitors the most useful information to establish credibility in the advertising agency behind this blog, and how can we continue to work to earn trust and business. It is important that your website provides a way to give that ad agency another chance, right? If you like someone and on your first "coffee date", are you not trying to line up a new opportunity to see this person? It's the same with the visitors of your website.

Graphics in Web Design: Helpful Tips

Chicago Web Design

Graphic Design elements in Chicago Web Design can sometimes be complex. Not only do you need to design for comfort and function, it has to be easily navigated no matter how illustrated or off the wall your graphics are. Use these tips for effective alternative web design using graphics.