The first thing we do is ensure the entire team is aware of the aims of the project. For example, what is expected of the website design of client X.

Clearly defining outcomes and expectations is essential, because when working on creative aspects there is a high level of tendency for the project to zoom off in weird, but wonderful directions. Some of which may not even be applicable to the client’s industry or type of work. This is the nature of the creative process and creative people! Many web design agencies make the mistake of taking creativity a tad too far, resulting int he client’s business taking a negative hit as the website does not suit his requirements. Establishing clear guidelines is very important as it is very easy to lose sight of the original purpose. Every detail of the project needs to be properly established, quantified, agreed and recorded. Here are a few guidelines to ensuring this is achieved.

Specific details – A clear written or typed description of the exact requirements (including final outcome) of the design project. It is essential that there are no grey areas here, because the final outcome of the project will be compared to this document to ensure zero variance.

Measure – Quantify every fixed aspect of the project such as budget, scale of application, milestones and deadline

Agree – Above details to be agreed with all parties involved in the project (client, management and creative team)

Be realistic – Even conceptual projects need to have realistic outcomes that need to be agreed upon. Also, it is essential that the expectations/outcome of the project, creative requirements and deadlines are realistic.

Timebound – Start and finish times, milestones etc need to be clearly defined and adhered to. It is also essential to measure along the way to ensure that the project is on schedule.

Ethics – Incorporate ethics from the start (i.e. discourage shortcuts, plagiarism) so that you provide a valuable reference point to maintain integrity.

Record – Every detail pertaining to the project should be written down and agreed upon in order to avoid communication breakdowns, gaps and confusion.

These points cover all that is essential to ensure proper execution of a design project. Trust us, we know! J

Twitter can help your business blast forth corporate messaging, advertisements and, occasionally, customer support. With Twitter being so popular, it is natural for every business to want a larger piece of the pie. However, with immense competition, your business needs to have a good strategy first. The thing to remember is Twitter is not a business tool, it is more of a facilitator.

While you feel that you are reaching out to a vast array of potential customers, your audience may tend to feel that your messages are spammy and at times phony. You need to strike a balance between promoting your business and truly engaging with your followers. It is important to structure the content in such a way that your followers eagerly anticipate your net Tweet. Here are four aspects your business needs to focus on to craft an approach that will appeal to your followers:

1. Quality, not quantity

The fundamental reason a business gets on Twitter is to get prospects to engage with it. Keeping this in mind it is always better to publish engaging snippets rather than bombard your followers with tweets every 5 minutes or so, promoting your products and services. It is possible to get a bit of attention by posting an array of tweets within short time-spans, but the result is the followers end up “unfollowing” the business. On Twitter, the quality of the content carries much more weight than the quantity. Remember, if you are just pushing for sales, you are limiting your exposure and hurting your brand. If you are posting something valuable and interesting, it will be retweeted and reach a wider audience.

2. Define yourself clearly

One of the best things about Twitter and other form of social media is that they allow you to have real conversations with people whom you may otherwise not be able to reach. The key to make this happen is to ensure people know who you are. Most companies fail here, as they do not present a complete picture of themselves on the profile. Company Twitter profiles and backgrounds should contain detailed information about the business and what the business actually does. It should also contain details of contact people (e.g. community manager’s name etc). Although not feasible due to time constraints, if your company has a high-profile and social media-savvy CEO, it is not unreasonable for that person to handle tweets. In that case, you can also put a face to a name and give your social media specialist some room on the company Twitter page. Let’s face it, fans like to know they are talking to a real person, not an automated system.

3. Do not play robot stalker

If you have seen those annoying robotic message that come in the form of scheduled tweets with generic information or auto tweets with useless messages, you will understand how your followers will feel if you resort to the same tactics. If you cannot respond to tweets or messages from followers, do not bother with automated messages. It will ultimately lead that follower to believe he’s dealing with a system instead of a real person, and he or she probably will not try to contact you again.

4. Make yourself useful

Keeping an eye on users and targeting response can be effective, if your information is useful. Keep in mind that your followers will be put off by messages that seem inauthentic.

When crafting your business’s Twitter strategy, remember that you are dealing with people. Keep it fun, light-hearted, interesting and above all, real. Your followers will appreciate that and you know what that translates into – more followers and brand popularity.

Focusing your energy on One Goal can work wonders in terms of achievement rather than placing your eggs in many baskets. Here are five tips to making your goal setting process simple and effective.

Step 1: Brainstorm – If you do not have an important goal or a couple of goals that you want to achieve, take a piece of paper and write down on all you hope to achieve one day. The reason that you put everything down on paper is to ensure that you do not miss any.

Step 2: Shortlist – Review your list and narrow it down to one or two items that will transform your life the most, if achieved, this year. If that main goal would take a few years, you need to break it down into sub-goals to identify which you can achieve during this year. Make sure it is achievable within the next year and also that it is something your passionate about, if not it is very difficult to stay motivated.

Step 3: Make it personal – Once you have narrowed your sights to one specific goal, turn it into a personal mantra. Simplify your goal to 2-5 words and write it down on an index card, make it your desktop wallpaper and you can even paste a copy on your mirror so that you see it on a regular basis. Say it out every day and internalise it.

Step 4: What is the next (immediate) step – Break down this annual goal into smaller sub-goals and figure out what needs to be done to get you closer to your goal. Block everything else out and focus on just the upcoming month.

Step 5: Dissecting the sub-goals – Once you have figured out what you need to do during the upcoming month, repeat your mantra and figure out what needs to be done today in order to get you closer to the goal. Remember, it can be just one small thing, such as a phone call or sending an e-mail. Keep doing one thing each day and eventually you will get closer to your goal. A useful hint – Make sure that the one thing you do each day, is item number 1 on your daily agenda! Do not push it to the end of the day, which will increase the chances of it being postponed to tomorrow.

Although 5 steps seem to be a lot to keep in mind, all you are doing is clearly identifying your goal, making it your mantra, breaking it down into smaller chunks and achieving them one day at a time.

Usability is making it easy for your visitors to find desired information, when they need it, on your website.

Contrary to popular belief, usability is not expensive. If web design agencies tell you otherwise, do not believe them. For SMEs, making websites usable is a cinch and does not require extensive knowledge or equipment. You simply need to get the basics right!

1. Always include a tagline - This is essential as it states, in simple terms, your company’s business or mission. Statistics show that you have 8 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention, failing which he/she will simply move on to another site. Therefore, a good, clear tagline is your first step to informing a visitor what you are all about!

2. “Site search” option – Help visitors by implementing a 27 characters wide site search and place it on top of your website so that they can key in what they are looking for and be directed accordingly. Also, place the search option on the top of your website, because users tend to view a page from the top left to the bottom right.

3. Refrain from using extensive graphics – When it comes to usability, less is always more. Do not abuse the use of graphics just because they are available. Graphics have to be limited to improve your website, not decorate it.

4. Use site maps – Site maps facilitate easy navigation and also search engine optimisation. Site maps provide a snap shot view of the structure and layout of your website, making it easy for users to find their way around.

5. Do not disrupt the activities a user is doing on the website – This includes filling out forms, browsing categories/archives, registering etc. Allow the user to cancel any operation without forcing him/her to go through with what they started. Ensure your content guides users with their workflow. Another idea to keep in mind is, change the colour of the links they have clicked on and let them know where they’ve been and where not.

6. Avoid overuse of JavaScript – JavaScript and AJAX technique allow web designers to create responsive and transparent websites. However, the downside is that some browsers may not support these developments or the user’s browser may not have JavaScript enabled. By extensively using JavaScript, you run the risk of losing these visitors.

7. Make your website easily “scannable” – Reports show that users do not spend time reading through the content of the website, but they scan through, focusing on bold or large fonts, heading etc. Break the content into easy to browse bullet points or paragraphs, paying special attention to the first two paragraphs.

8. Misleading UI Controls are a “no, no” – User Interface (UI) controls are web page elements, buttons, components and widgets that users interact with when browsing your website. Do not design elements that look like buttons, but do not function that way or underlined text that is not a link. By not getting the action they were expecting, users would assume that the site is broken and eventually leave. One other important usability tip regarding UI controls is consistency: Make sure that your UI controls are consistent. Just have a look at Yahoo’s home page for an idea of consistent UI controls.

9. Provide meaningful feedback - Meaningful feedback is the communication channel between the user and the website, with which we can let users know what is going on, on the site. In case of an error on your web page, do not just state “error occurred”. Instead, write meaningful error messages, which tell the user what went wrong, and what actions they can perform from there. You can even make it cheeky!

Got any other tips? Feel free to share them with us!

Leave Your PC Running or Putting it to Sleep?

Once you are done with your day’s work and it is time to hit the sack what do you do with your PC – do you turn it off, leave it running or do you put it on standby (sleep) mode?

The most common thing that people do is shut off the PC in order to let it cool off as well as save on the electricity bills. Some feel, however, that the start-up and shutdown functions create additional wear and tear. Due to this, they argue that leave the PC running 24/7 is the way to go.

Research conducted by Iolo Labs concludes the following:

1. When you put your PC to sleep you save a small amount of money on a monthly basis as opposed to leaving it running

2. Putting the PC to sleep results in you saving about 25 minutes each month (attributable to the time saved on start-up and shutdown)

Clearly, putting your PC to sleep is the way to go. The draw back with this study was that we are not sure if they considered the hibernate mode as well. When the PC is put to sleep, it consumes a tiny amount of power, whereas in hibernation mode, it is effectively off.

For the moment, we decided to go with putting the PC to sleep as it allows you to avoid the hassle of long boot times, and allows you to commence work almost immediately, from where you left off.

Safely Remove your USB Device by Simply Unplugging it

If you are a Windows user, like most people, you may have got conditioned to removing your USB device by first clicking the “Safely Remove Hardware” option in the System Tray. In theory, this is done in order to make sure that Windows is not busy reading from or writing data to the drive at the time when you remove it, because doing so could corrupt the data or even damage the drive.

However, there is a way you can by-pass this routine with minimal or zero performance loss. Here is what you need to do (steps are based on Windows 7 and things may be slightly different on older Windows versions):

1. Plug your USB device into your PC

2. Open Device Manager

3. Expand Disk Drives and locate the entry for your USB drive (generally, it is called “USB2.0 Flash Disk USB Device).

4. Right click that entry, click Properties and select the Policies Tab.

5. Select the first option “Quick Removal” (its description reads as “you can disconnect the device safely without using the Safely Remove Hardware notification icon”).

The impact on your performance by selecting this option is almost negligible, and beats the hassle of having to waste clicks and waiting for the go ahead to remove your USB drive.

We’d love to hear from, let us know how these tips worked for you and also keep us posted on any other great tips that you come across.If you enjoyed this post, make sure to subscribe to my rss feed. Thank blogingbloging.com sharing this themes.

The truth is no Social Media presence is better than having a bad one! Just because something is, the “in” thing does not mean your business has to blindly jump aboard.

Yes, it is true that Social Media can work wonders for your business. However, certain social media channels may not be appropriate for your type of business and you need to accept this.

Here are 3 questions you need to ask yourself or your marketing people before going “social”.

1. How will Social Media support your business?

Most people get on social media because they hear about it from somewhere or they see others on it. As a business owner, you would be exposed to countless advertising messages saying, “Social Media is a great way to market your business”. Most business owners who do go “social” do not possess an understanding of why they’re doing it (besides to keep up with so and so) or what to expect from it. Due to this, they cannot even define what social success media success will be for their business even if the strategy works out.

The important thing here is to understand how social media will increase your revenue, decrease costs and/or increase customer engagement/support. Take some time out and work out your social media goals before you get involved so that you’ll be “on top of things” when it becomes a success and also you’ll know when to invest more resources.

2. How realistic are your expectations?

With millions of brands going “social”, success on Social Media is very difficult. You need to pay attention 24/7, constantly evolve and most importantly have realistic expectations. A good understanding of critical success factors is essential. Social Media success requires a lot of time and effort and if you cannot dedicate yourself or hire a person/team to handle it, do not start! You need to be on the ball all the time! And you cannot launch a website today, and expect SEO traffic to flood your website the next day. Similarly, Social Media success also requires time and effort. You need to be willing to work for the long-term payoff if you want social media to build your business.

3. Why should your target audience care?

The key to Social Media success is interactivity, and without it, users will not stick around, engage with your brand or buy something. Ask yourself, why should your target audience “like” your Facebook page, read your blog or interact with you online?

Your audience interacts with you because it benefits them, and not because you are awesome (harsh truth)! Maybe it makes them laugh, cry, feel connected, or even shocks them into taking action! Either way, it is not about you. To success in the Social Media sphere you need to understand this and be laser focused on your audience and their wants, needs and desires.

For example, just because you are in a “boring industry” does not mean people won’t “like” your Facebook page, read your blog posts or follow you on Twitter. You simply need to focus on what your product/service does for them, and create content around that. People will interact only if they care. Engaging with them, watching what they respond to and experimenting are the only ways to achieve this. If you are not ready to go down this road, then it’s best that you do not waste your time on Social Media at all and focus those efforts on other online marketing tools like e-mail and direct marketing to generate sales.

Working hard most often than not decreases your productivity, drains your creative energy and affects the relationships with you family and friends. Working hard on pursuits that you are passionate about is great. However, you must remember that taking regular breaks too is important. Here are 11 great tips we have tried to adopt at Elite Web Studio in order to avoid becoming workaholics.

1. Set clear time constraints – Define your work hours clearly (e.g. 8am – 5pm) and make sure you leave the office at 5pm. Do not make it a habit to stay late, unless of course your services are very urgently needed. This may happen on very rare occasions.

2. Get adequate sleep – staying up very late to hurriedly finish off some work and then waking up at 5am again is not healthy. It will burn you out in terms of creativity, lower your morale and even cause irritability, making your presence intolerable to your colleagues and even family members. Work smart, not hard.

3. Disconnect yourself from the digital world – You can get insane amounts of creative work done when your social media, e-mail and mobile device are all shut off. Most great ideas are born when you not working or connected to the digital world. Remember the last time when you conceived that creative bit of content or design? Chances are you were in the shower, taking a walk, cooking or simply relaxing. |Ideas can hit you at any time and it pays to have a notebook handy to jot down them down, lest you forget.

4. Become one with nature – Spending time with nature is a great stress reliever. It helps disconnect from everyday, work-related worries. Set aside about 30 minutes a day to do some mindful walking through natural surroundings. Simply tune out and enjoy the tranquillity of nature.

5. Pay attention to your body – If you are feeling tired, cranky and apathetic, you may be working too hard. Listening to your body will tell you when you need to slow down and take things easy.

6. Spend time family, friends and partner – When you work too much, you tend to cut off those who are very important parts of your life. Work is important, but so are your loved ones. Disconnect from your work life and make a conscious effort to enjoy the company of your loved ones. Kick back, have a coffee and some good conversation with your closest friend, and see for yourself how it benefits you.

7. Have a healthy diet – Working hard may result in you gobbling down your food, at times junk food in order to get back to work. Take time out and enjoy some real food for a change. Try out some fresh fruits, whole grains and vegetables. Eat slowly and truly savour every bite.

8. Constantly re-evaluate your goals – Make it a point to ask yourself:

Why am I doing this?

Am I on the way to fulfilling my ambitions?

What is the point of it all?

Am I truly living life?

9. Cultivate healthy habits – Make small, positive changes on a daily basis. Try to eat healthy. Squeeze in about 30 minutes of exercise time. Spend time with your family. All of this will add up and be of great value in your quest to effectively balance work and life.

10. Start a hobby – Cultivate a hobby that is not related to your work by brainstorming your interests. You can start running, reading or even writing. Learn a new skill such as web design or a new language. A great hobby will help you forget your work woes and truly lose yourself.

11. Connect with others who have a great work-life balance – Seek out and engage with people who seem to have great work-life balances. Associating such people will help your transition much easier as their positive influence rub off on you.

Give these tips a shot. After all, you only have one life to live and do not live it behind your workstation!

Here are five reasons why we at Elite Web Studio are delighted about things to come:

Collapsing of Barriers

We’re still looking at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Internet, as it’s just beginning to show its potential as a mechanism for enriching minds as well as medium of doing business all over the world. As far as learning the intricacies of coding goes, the barriers are most definitely coming down thanks to initiatives such as Codecademy, Programr, and Bloc etc. These freely available opportunities have made web-based careers accessible to all those with ambition and drive. How does all this translate for Web Design? Well, it just means that there will be more brilliant, creative minds building, shaping and redefining the industry.

Constantly Evolving Standards

It took four years for CSS (born in 1996) to be fully compatible in any single browser, with IE being the first. That was a time when skilled designers played minimal roles in the creation of a website. In addition, the tools were too primitive for them to unleash their creativity. At present, HTML5, CSS3 and applications of JavaScript are making the Web THE place for any designer, because of the flexibility and interactivity they offer. Even subtle interactivity and animations are becoming lighter and easier to implement. Our people at Elite Web foresee an even more responsive Web in our horizon, minus the gaudy transitions and loading screens.

Print designers get your party hats out!

The Web has finally paved way for designers with print design merging with the modern Web page. Crazy possibilities, interactivity and fluidity that a few years back were mere pip-dreams of designers are all possible now. Young, talented designers and their skills are flowing right into the Web, forever changing the way we experience it.

Typography

The Web, even in the recent past, was built around fonts like Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman and Comic Sans. Presently the rich world of Typography is flooding in. Every web designer is exposed to a wide range of Type options. Yes, it also does pave way for bad and illegible text, but we shouldn’t forget the countless good things it has brought. Websites too, like printed matter, need beautiful type. Tools like Google Fonts are available to help resolve hosting and licensing problems that foundries are facing, but as time goes on new licenses and maybe even new file formats will help ease legal problems while bringing typography to the Internet.

So many screens

Responsive design is a two edged sword – it is just as good as it bad. It can indeed be very stressful preparing for the unpredictable screen sizes and viewing situations opens up new opportunities to make order out of chaos. Although designing for different platforms is a bit of a barrier for some designers, we need to understand the possibilities that are open when the Web is no longer restricted to to a desktop or laptop.

Although technical and visual related problems continue to haunt web designers, the industry itself has grown, and will continue to do so, beyond its humble beginnings. The opportunities that are available are limitless. Hence, we are excited! Are you?

1. The creative spark is born through experiences, sights and sounds. While sitting still may work (if you are absolutely focused and in a meditative state), experimenting and playing around new things will add fuel to your creative spark.

2. Maintaining a pattern to your day works! The morning time, following breakfast, indicates the beginning of a new day of creating, day of revelling in ideas. Have a look your day’s task list and prioritise your work.

3. It is essential that at the close of each day, you jot down your tasks for the next day, so that you would know exactly what you need to accomplish. There is no room for mindless wander!

4. Have separate folders or files to store items relating to each of your projects. This way you will know exactly where you stand on each project and there is no headache of misplaced items.

5. If you are a designer or writer, it helps to keep different sketchbooks for different topics/ideas. One for business, one for leisure/random work etc. is the way to go. This makes sure you do not get your thoughts and ideas mixed up.

6. Always have a notebook at hand so that the moment an idea hits you, you are in a position to jot it down. Many of us make the mistake of allowing those fleeting ideas just pass us by without acting on them.

7. When you are stuck in a rut, try to connect things, random things. For example, if you see something blue, try to keep your senses open to all that is blue, and you will notice things that you have never noticed before. This way, while you are narrowing your focus to one thing, you are heightening your sense of awareness.

8. Once in awhile, or more frequently, try to do things differently. When you are stuck in a rut, you will notice that more often than not, you are stuck because you have limited yourself to a certain way of doing things. During those times, simply stop and look at how others are doing things, to identify different ways of doing things. If you are a web designer, take some time off and browse through the works of others! If you end up in a rut drawing something and you need to erase, always start afresh on a fresh page so that you don’t dwell on the same old idea.

9. Practice, practice, practice! Creativity, just like your arms and legs, requires regular exercise. Keep creating without excuse. In creativity, showing up is half the work. So stay at it. Get started. Keep creating.

In case you do not what we are talking about, Dropbox is a cloud-based storage device that easily and automatically syncs files between PCs, portable devices, and the Web. It’s insanely popular, and with good reason. All you need to do is sign up for a Dropbox account in your browser (Chrome, Firefox or Safari as these are the only browsers that presently support the service) and you are good to go.

Although it incorporated the word “drop” as a part of its name, Dropbox has always been rather annoying in terms of being not supporting dragging and dropping files to its web client.

Well, that’s all over! From now on, you can simply drag a file from your desktop and directly drop it to Dropbox on the Web. That means, no more clicking upload, navigating your folders to locate the file(s) you want etc.

Here is another great feature of the new and improved Dropbox – you get 2GB storage space with your Dropbox account. In addition, if you refer friends, who in turn sign up for Dropbox services, you can earn up to 16GB of bonus storage space.

So what are you waiting for – simply drag and drop files from your desktop to that window and they’re uploaded instantly!

What are your opinions of Dropbox? Or do you think it requires other features as well or would you rather say it is perfect as it is?