Our recent survey of design and development firms revealed a tantalizing statistic: Freelancers who use value-based pricing were more likely to report annual income over $50,000 per year than freelancers who weren’t. Could it raise revenues for your practice? Value-based pricing is charging a percentage of the additional revenue your project will generate for the client, rather than charging a fixed hourly rate. Here’s an excellent...

Let’s not beat around the bush, local SEO is hard. If you represent a business in a large city and you’re aiming for a top 3 maps business listing (the Snack Pack), then it’s even harder. You can spend many stressful hours tailoring every little aspect of your site, trying to achieve this and lose sanity along the way wondering where you’ve gone wrong. It can be a very lonely place. An important thing to do to retain your sanity is to be realistic...

Crello is an innovative design tool from Depositphotos that’s simple to pick up and use, and outputs high-quality results. In an increasingly saturated design tool market, it could be the best tool you’ve never tried. Now, after the popularity of Crello, Depositphotos are releasing Crello Animation Maker. A brand new set of features that enable anyone to convert design assets into engaging animation for the web, in just a few clicks....

Welcome to our roundup of the best websites launched (or relaunched with significant updates) this August. The Summer’s almost over, vacations are less frequent, and we’re starting to see businesses gearing up for the Fall. This month we’ve included some great e-commerce, some design agencies with a difference, and some products with marketing challenges. There’s a huge trend for bold color, subtle animations, and scrolling...

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.  The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week. Note...

Designers, developers, site owners… lend me your eyeballs for a bit. There’s something rotten in the state of pre-made website themes. Alright, I’ve offended The Bard quite enough. But you get my point, right? Themes have gotten a bad rap for a variety of reasons: they can have bloated code, content must be designed to fit in them rather than designing them to fit the content, et cetera. But they’ve also gotten really good. Many are made...

Just like anything else, product design can be done well, and it can be done poorly. When a product is designed well, users don’t notice it. But when a product is designed poorly, users not only notice, but also complain. In this article, I want to share five the most common things that lead to bad product design. 1. Adding Too Many Features to a Product All too often designers think about features as a synonymous with value. They believe that the...

YOOtheme Pro is a premium site builder from YOOtheme. The culmination of over a decade of design and development for WordPress and Joomla, it’s a professional-grade solution for creating and managing beautiful websites. Every client loves the power of a content management system, but not all clients have the same needs, challenges, or priorities. YOOtheme Pro is one of only a handful of solutions that embraces both WordPress, and Joomla,...

What’s old is new again; that’s the theme this month with new tools for designers with a few new tools that are rooted in the “old” concepts of design theory. From working with typefaces, to a color wheel, this roundup is packed with goodies. And then there are some new “new” tools as well, including a couple of cool 3D elements. If we’ve missed something that you think should have been on the list, let us know in the comments. And if...

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.  The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week. Note...

It always starts as an innocent conversation. Whether it’s an email, an SMS conversation, or face-to-face, it starts simply enough: “Hey, how are you doing? How are the cats? Did you see the new Netflix show that we all insist must be watched?” You know, normal stuff. But then comes the non sequitur. Many of your old friends and family don’t know enough about technology to ease into the topic. It just comes out of the blue. “So I hear you...

Have you performed a mobile speed test lately? How does your website rank? A slow website can turn mobile users away. Ideally, you want your design to load just as quickly for 3G users on phones as it does for desktop users on Wi-Fi. (That’s a pretty big ask, but there are things you can go to make it happen.) First, test your mobile speed. And then use these tips to improve your performance, and keep more users on your site longer. 1. Optimize Images...

Web designers are some of the hardest working people I know. Which is why I don’t envy them having to design websites and other content for clients while managing their freelance design business and continually being on the lookout for new clients. Something I’m reminded of when I think about this, however, is the fact that it’s 25% more expensive to find new clients than retain the ones you already have. It makes sense when you think about...

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Our Secret Reptilian Overlords, I asked for more color in last month’s article, and you have delivered. It’s August, now, and to distract myself from the oppressive heat, I have gathered some 20 of these more colorful designs together for your perusal. So as you might guess, there’s a fair bit of variety this month. There’s still some good old monochromatic minimalism for those of you who like that, so never fear....