5 Free Online Tools to Create Infographics in the Blink of an Eye

Information graphics, known as infographics, are visual representation of information in a simple, easy to absorb, and colorful manner. They make it possible for statistical, historical and media data to be shown in an understandable way. Professional infographics designers use graphic softwares to create infographics designs.

These types of software are developed to treat all elements of an infographic separately and then to bring them together, by rotating, moving, and overlapping them.

However, infographics design software programs are expensive. But there are now a lot of free online tools that can come to the rescue of those who need to create a simple, but well-organized infographic design. Each of these tools offers various options for easy and quick creation of your project and work directly in the browser.

We’ve compiled a list of free online tools to create infographics in a snap

Infogr.am

Positioning itself as an online tool that helps to create awesome visualizations of data, and at the same time making it interactive, responsive and engaging, this platform offers four chart types: pie, line, bar, and matrix. It allows editing any chart type with your own information, customizing your chart. The infographic design you create on Infogr.am can be uploaded on your blog, website, or wiki. Infogr.am’s basic version is free with premium plans, such as pro, business and enterprise available for a monthly subscription fee starting at $15 per month.

Canva.com

Canva free online tool for beautiful infographic formats provides a wide range of amazing layouts for your design presentations, slides, posters and other visual documents. It has millions of images from which you can choose one that you like, or upload your own, to create amazing design. It provides photo filters to edit photographs, and hundreds of fonts, one of which will certainly be perfect for your infographics desing project. The platform’s service is free, however for high quality layouts you need to pay a certain fee.

Easel.ly

Easel website features thousands of templates that can be used right away for inforgraphics design creation. The platform makes possible for the user to upload his own phtograph and set it as background for his project, adding other various design elements to get its visual representation of information engaging and interactive. As with Infogr.am, the platform is available as a free and pro account option.

Picktochart.com

Pictochart is an easy-to-use infographic maker which can be a replacement of the human designer. The platform really features simple graphic tools that are easy to use even by the people who have little or no knowledge of infographics design. The service is free to register on, but there are pricing packages, such as Lite and Pro, starting at $15 per month, and depending on the features you want to usefrequently.

Visme.co

Visme allows users to create strong visual content and share it across the web, to extend its reachability. This service offers various types of visual content forms, such as infographics, reports, product demos, presentations, web banners, and many more. It gives the option of editing and customizing your visual content according to your liking, bringing your ideas to life. The user can start free with limited features or get highly creative with one of the service’s Premium plans, such as Standard or Complete, for a set monthly fee.

Love to Create Infographics?

With these awesome online tools for designing infographics that engage and enhance interaction will be a child’s play. Just keep in mind that the infographic is in its turn an instrument to help make complex information easily digestible for the common user and must include small, but significant, nuggets of information.

Do you know any other online tools to create infographics design? Share them with us in the comments below.

10 Essential Startup Website Design Tips

If you are a new company and try to kickstart your business, you must keep in mind that in the age of Internet there is no other better solution to make yourself seen and heard than a startup website design. Your company’s website is its ID, the means through which your company communicates with the customers and promotes its values and mission.

An attractive website, with eye-catching visuals and user-friendly navigation experience can increase engagement. But when you are new in the web presence, you are sure to miss significant elements of successful web design.

We compiled a list of tips to help you understand which elements are crucial for a startup website design.

1. Usability

Often, startups concentrate on making their website crowded with attention-grabbing elements and forget its main purpose – to attract prospects and to convert customers. Once you, as a business, understand this aspect, you should focus on making navigation and entire user experience friendly.

2. Unique call-to-action (CTA) button

CTA is always the best element to boost conversion. Therefore, the button must be designed to entice and to encourage the user to perform the action. A good CTA button for converting startup website design must be accompanied by a suitable message that clearly explains what the user must do, and bold, eye-catching color.

3. Opt for simple, fresh, and unique website design

When deciding on creating a website for startup, avoid obsolete template that has been used across numerous sites. Users are attracted to novelty that will contribute to making a unique impression about your way of communicating to them. What is even most important is the design of the homepage. The website homepage is usually the place where most first-time visitors will land when accessing your site. Therefore, ensure that the homepage speaks for your business and associates with its style and identity.

4. Good content makes the difference

Search engines like good quality content and rank the sites according to such index. People also like content and this tool can make them spend more time on the site and even return for fresh piece of information. Do a content audit once in a while and make sure it's always updated and in trend with market demands to get more traffic.

5. Make your startup website design responsive

In this mobile era, it is imperative to ensure equal accessibility to all device users. Responsive design is the best choice as it allows you to provide optimal viewing and interaction user experience.

6. Pay attention to load time

Mobile users expect to get equal load time, as desktop users do. According to KissMetrics research every second of page load time costs your website conversion. Users have no patience to wait too long for a page to load and abandon it just after 2-3 seconds.

7. Show your products and services

If you are selling products or are providing services, present them on your homepage in an organized website design manner. Clean images and concise description of the product and the service will win prospective customers over.

8. Choose a trustworthy platform 

Use a reliable platform for you small business website design. Thousands of user reviews that are available online can be of tremendous help. Make your research and decide what platform and features it offers suits your site purpose best.

9. Add links to social pages

Links to social pages included on your company’s homepage give the users the option to check you out and see what you have to say to and share with your followers on most popular social pages.

10. Testing is capital

Ask as many people as possible to test the website design before making it live. Your employees, family members and friends can point out problems that you’ve overlooked and that can be fixed, to ensure the best experience. Even after your website goes live, keep on testing and improving.

Conclusion

These are the tips and trends that can help you come up with a great startup website design and enhance outstanding user experience. Keep them in mind and do your homework on new and current website design trends to always be one step ahead of your competition.

Can you suggest other tips for designing startup websites? We would like to hear them from you in the comments section below.

Corporate Website Design Tips: What to Do, and What NOT to do

Corporate website design, as any other design, follows certain trends that are coming and going. In order to make your online presence memorable and to convey that feel of trust to your existing and potential clients, it is mandatory to keep your website fresh and up-to-date. Your business website is the major tool in analyzing performance of a marketing campaign through analytics. It also helps you generate new leads, make your brand visible, sell and communicate with your business partners.

We’ve compiled a list of tips that you can apply in your future corporate website design.

Less is more: the golden rule in web design

Keep the appearance of your website simple and clutter-free. Too much, like pop-ups, banners, text, buttons, advertisements, icons, can sometimes crowd the layout. Some white space on the page is not something to be afraid of. Nowadays simple is a trend that applies to many fields of our life. Web design is no exception.

Read: One-page website design ideas

Identify a unique style for your corporate website

Set a style that you want your corporate website design to adhere to. It is essential that the style you choose to be identifiable with your business mission, brand and vision. The website design is perceived as the online business card of your company, so you want to make consistent use of the same style that speaks for you.

Read:Why you should carefully choose your logo color design?

Make your business site text readable

Text is the means through which you communicate with your clients and partners. Its purpose is to provide answers to the questions they have. Therefore, the text on your website must be readable. Make sure that you choose up to three (two is ideal) fonts that you will constantly use while designing corporate website. Also, pay attention to the font size of the text. You want your readers to keep on reading the copy you’ve displayed for their information without the need to use a magnifying glass.

Read:Basic website usability tips to keep customers returning

Make you corporate website design mobile friendly

As we are living in the era of mobile devices and as mobile browsing gets more and more traffic, mobile-friendly website should be a major element to consider. Being mobile-friendly you will reach a larger client pool. And, you do want to ensure that mobile device users enjoy the same smooth and responsive browsing experience as your desktop users do.

Check your business website load time

Make sure your website loads fast. But for this, you need to get rid of all duplicate scripts and included files. It is already a known fact that users are keen to leave a website page that loads longer than 3 seconds. Time is gold and you want to benefit from every second of it to your own good.

Plan annual redesign of your corporate webpage

Once your busines site design is done, there is still no time to lose. Now review and refresh responsibilities step in. A website must be reviewed annually and refreshed or redesigned accordingly.

Conclusion

Corporate website design trends are changing. However, with these simple and basic, yet effective tips you will be able to keep the pace. You do want to keep in mind that the website design of your company is the means through which the business it carries out is introduced to the world and that the first impression always counts.

Are there any other tips for a successful business website design you want to share with us? Write them in the comments section below.

One-Page Website Design Ideas

One-page website design trends depend on the type of message you want to send to the world with your simple, yet very informative and clean one-page layout. Whatever it is you want it to focus on, single page solution can incorporate content, full-screen photography, video clips, and animated elements in a smart and beautiful way, to make user experience more stunning. This type of website often have the scroll bar incorporated at the side so that you can drag the page up and down and see the entire page at once.

With the multitude of websites that make their way into the online realm that it is hard to keep track of, web designers are faced with the challenge to create experience that will be remembered and that will stand out from the crowd. Nowadays, it seems that simplicity is the element that is sought after by many large brands and companies, who put accent on catering to people’s short-lasting attention span.

You should however, remember that single page website design doesn’t meet all purposes. This type of design should be thoroughly considered before engaging in such a project.

Here are some ideas to make your next one-page website design adventure easier:

Changing content box at the top of the page

This feature can save you the need to create a multi-page website. This way you are able to incorporate the important content in the most eye-catching spot of the layout.

Vertical, horizontal or 2D scroll

Another thing you should consider is the way the user will scroll through your one-page design. Is it from top to bottom, from bottom to top or all over the page? There is also the parallax effect, which often is the means to engage visitors and to draw their attention to a certain topic. Whatever you choose, you need to take into account the experience you want to make available to your users.

Stunning photograph

One-page website design is often focused on awesome full-screen photography. Choose the image that best identifies with the site’s purpose and idea.

Color choice

Color is important in this type of web design as well. You don’t have too much time to keep the user interested in the story you want to tell with your single page site. Therefore, the choice of color is imperative. Make sure you associate the color with other elements, such as photography, video and even typography, to ensure that they all fit well in the website layout.

Strong call to action feature

Make sure you incorporate a CTA (Call-to-action) that will make users take action, without giving a second thought to it. The CTA feature, whether for email signup, order placement, app download and etc. does half of the job for the site.

Conclusion

When it comes to designing an one-page website,trends tend to focus on minimal and simple features and elements, but encourage further user interaction. They are mobile friendly, due to the fact that there is only one single page that needs to be loaded to see a concise, but well-structured and informative content.

Whether you are a startup, or a business with years on the market, it is up to you to decide what suits your business goals best: one-page or multi-page website design.

What other single-page website design ideas do you know? Write them in the comments section below.

Ecommerce Website Design: The Biggest Problems to Fix

Lately, e-commerce website businesses have registered huge revenue and success. It is predicted that this trend will continue and even get bigger in the following years. Therefore, it is no surprise that such types of businesses pop up at the speed of sound. But, when putting your thought into developing e-commerce websites you need to consider that there are several problems that you need to approach to make your website effective, functional and reachable.

Showcasing a wide range of products is not enough to make your ecommerce boost. A lot of problems can be avoided with more careful consideration, research and planning.

Here are some of the biggest problems that every ecommerce development company may encounter:

Lack of shipping and return information

As your customer, I want to know what my options are in case I am not satisfied with the product I have bought from you. Therefore, adding shipping and return information can make me decide whether to proceed with my purchase, if the information is detailed and clear enough, or simply go find another platform that offers the same products, in case your website doesn’t give the information I am looking for.

Short product description

When shopping in a store, you have the chance to feel the product, to examine it from all sides, to read the label and other information that is written on the packages, if the product comes in a package. Online shopping doesn’t give you such opportunity.

Therefore, you need to make sure that all customers’ questions about every product showcased on your ecommerce site are answered. Such information as sizes, material, weight, dimensions is important for product description.

Few product images

If you are managing an online clothing or footwear store, this problem is what makes your customers leave the page before making any purchase. It is known that people tend to pay more attention to the visual elements, feeling more comfortable in making a shopping decision. That is why include more than one picture of the same item from different angles and even add shots of some special features of the product.

Few payment options

With the ecommerce business expanding so quickly, it is essential to make this option available to as many customers as possible. Don’t concentrate on adding payment options with PayPal account or credit card, such as Visa and Master Card only.

Think broader. There are people who don’t hold a credit card, but who are willing to buy a product from your website. Come with an option that will satisfy these customers’ needs too and make-shopping experience reachable to as many people as you can.

Lack of shipping rates

As your customer, I want to go to checkout, complete it and think that I will soon be holding the product I dreamt of for so long. If you say that for my territory, or for a certain product, special shipping rates apply and that they will be sent in a separate email, I will definitely lose interest in completing my purchase. There is no reason why shipping rates can’t be included on the website.

Confusing navigation

If the website doesn’t provide categories and subcategories of products, then site navigation is not effective. Think of a solution for this if you want to convert visitors into buyers and make navigation enjoyable and user-friendly for them to move around the site.

Shopping cart design problems

The shopping cart that your ecommerce website has must allow users to add more than one item, to revise the products they want to buy before checkout and make changes, if required. A preview of total amount to be paid, including shipping fees, will give them the feeling of security.

Conclusion

Ecommerce website design has come a long way. Now, there are thousands of such websites, with interactive design, using different approaches and tricks to convert visitors into customers. If you take into consideration these basic problems that you can deal with when creating your own ecommerce platform, your business will avoid the unnecessary trouble of getting through multiple functionality fixing procedures.

What are other problems of ecommerce design that you know of? Share them with us in the comments section below.

Print Design Tips for Begginers

Print design, as web design, is a field that requires creativity and attention to details and different features you want to use in your materials. Whether it is about newspaper, manuals, prints, posters, restaurant menus, and business cards and so on, correcting an error on a print material calls for additional expenses.

There are certain things that need to be done first, before embarking on a new graphic design project. You need to identify all requirements and the purpose of the project. Also, you need to decide whether your project will concentrate on images or whether will include text. Another important thing is to determine whether the project will be single-filed or a brochure with more pages.

Before starting working on the project, ask your client the following questions:

• What is the size of the final print document?
• What color does his/her project associate with?

These two answers will provide you with a starting point and will set some limits in terms of usability of color palette and final file size.

It is known that every print designer has his own working approach, but there are several basic tricks and tips which, once mastered, will make the entire work a piece of cake.

Here are most important printing design tips every beginner have to stick with:

Paper size

Although the good old A4 size of the print material is standard in printing, don’t let yourself be caught in the standardized threads. You can always play with sizes, namely that smaller A5 paper size is much more comfortable to handle and take with you.

Content matters

If you are dealing with a text-based print design remember to concentrate on content. And make sure that the text you incorporate in the graphic design is readable.

Remember the bleed

Bleed is the element that allows the printable file to be cropped according to its correct size. This element gives the cropping some room for error. Usually, a 3mm bleed is a safe standard to work with.

Typography

Don’t just jump and use the first font you like. Take time to analyze the message and voice you want to send with the font you use. Think about the best way to communicate it to your target audience. You can also mix and match several fonts, but in this case you need to be extremely careful to make sure that several mixed fonts go hand in hand.

Color, color, color

We’ve already said that you need to check the color palette with your client. But, if you think that the color he chooses doesn’t suit the print design project you are working on, don’t be afraid to let him know and bring strong arguments to stand your ground.

Related: Designing a Brand Identity in Few Steps

Photographic content

High quality image makes a big deal in printing. If you have good resolution photography to work with your final result will be outstanding. Therefore, tell the client that high resolution and quality of the photograph will mirror the print design output.

Conclusion

Print graphic design might seem tricky, but it is something that will always be on demand. Printed material is a more personal approach of the companies that they use for marketing campaigns, and not only. People usually are keener to trust information that they can physically touch, rather than just read on a screen.

Do you want to share other tips that you make use of when creating your own design for print? Leave a message in the comments section below.