Building a website that will serve as a home-base is the number one reason you should start a site. Plus, it gives you the best digital asset you could possibly need to make your mark in the eCommerce world.

Choosing a Web Host

One of the most difficult tasks in building a website is not in building the website itself but in choosing a platform that will work for what you wish to achieve. You also need to evaluate and think about whether you will be using raw code to build your site or using the tools available to create your site.

To help you decide, we are previewing three sites in this post shown below.

WordPress

WordPress is an increasingly growing platform that offers a way to publish quickly and easily on a user-friendly platform. WordPress.org is the site to go to if you want to publish on their online platform without downloading the program. If you want the downloadable program, you will want to go to WordPress.com. There you can download the full version along with any plugins you want to use with the program.

WordPress has a lot of advantages over the other platforms. First, it is one of the most popular platforms out there so that means it already has its own traffic. People who use this platform have access to their own internal search engine and you may get more traffic due to being on this popular platform, as well. Secondly, WordPress has a user-friendly interface that can be expanded upon by adding plugins. You can get plugins from the site itself or from third-party developers.

WordPress functions like a blog so you can easily include a blog on your site or incorporate it into your website so that people can follow your posts. They also have several different formats and templates so you can decide how you want your website to work and what features you prefer. There are many benefits to using WordPress to power your site, and if you are looking for, even more, you can read up on five of the best reasons here.

If you want a platform that offers a variety of pre-made templates and tools, you may prefer the ease-of-use of the WordPress platform. Their pricing ranges from free to $24.92 per month, billed annually.

Weebly

Weebly is another platform that is popular with many website owners and builders. It is easy enough to create your own website on the Weebly platform or you can outsource it and have someone else do it. You can create your own eCommerce store on Weebly and sell your products in a variety of ways, according to their website. They combine the best of eCommerce, marketing, and inventory management all in one place.

You can start a basic Weebly website for free but you need to pay up to $25 per month for a business package if you want to expand and grow your business. The business version also has unlimited storage for your files. There are many advanced features and benefits to hosting and building a site through Weebly, which you can read on here.

Wix

Wix is yet another popular website building platform that offers a variety of features. They brag about their ads that you can easily and quickly create your own website in one afternoon.

Their best feature is probably the easy drag-n-drop interface that allows you to drag and drop files to your page and put together an impressive page on your own. Their site takes a “minimalist” approach to website building, and you can create a modern-looking eCommerce site without a fuss. You can learn more about Wix and the many premium services they offer through this review on blogging.org.

The pricing for the Wix platform ranges from $5 per month to $25 per month, depending on the features you want and how much bang for your buck you are after.

SquareSpace

Squarespace.com is the fourth platform we are evaluating today. Squarespace has a minimalist look to their own website and they feature a number of things you may like when considering what you want to include like:

• Professional Templates
• Easy interface
• Custom domains
• Mobile apps
• Free typekit fonts
• Built-in mobile websites
• Image manager
• Audio and media collection
• Social media connection capability
• Blogging an commenting section

These are just a few of their many, many features on Squarespace.com. Check out their site to learn more and check out their features.

And the winner is…

This is always the section we dread talking about because the sites we review all have their value points. However, there were some specific features and things that we thought stood out with some of these platforms. For example, Squarespace wins in terms of the sheer number of features. With all of the plethora of functions that they allow website designers to do, there is no need to go elsewhere to get your site to do what you need it to do. There are some great advantages to the idea of “colocation of services” which includes a central dashboard like they have on Squarespace that allows you to do whatever you want with your design.

When it comes to simplicity, however, we think that WordPress is probably the best bet due to its easy interface and features that allow anyone to create a nice-looking website for their organization or business.

Many people like Wix and Weebly due to its modern appeal and the ability to drag-and-drop items with a template and other tools that take the guesswork out.

But sometimes it’s best to find a hybrid type of system that allows both drag-and-drop technology and coding within the system.

The Need for Creative Freedom

The best idea when you are planning a website for your business is to write down what is important to you. How much space do you need? What types of things do you plan to include on your page? Do you want to implement a blog? What about social media and multimedia sharing and mobile app connectivity?

All of these are important questions to ask when planning your website. Ideally, you should find a platform that allows you to use their platform to easily put up the site, while also allow HTML coding and other creative tools to add to what you already have.

One idea is to hire a professional web design team. By doing this, you will be getting a dedicated group of people who know how to implement the platform you are using into your website while allowing you to expand by using raw coding and other tools.

If you are looking for a professional web design team, try us. We are webdesignteam.com and we offer a way to have the best of both worlds when it comes to utilizing integrated technologies while allowing creative freedom.

Visit our website and check out our portfolio to learn more. Then get a free quote to learn about what we can do for you.

Your website is too important to leave it to chance. So get started today with a free estimate and put your site out there. No matter which platform you choose, remember that the appearance and functionality of your site is imperative to succeed in the online world.

Visit webdesignteam.com to find out more.

The post WordPress vs. Weebly vs. Wix vs. Squarespace – Which is Best for Site Building? appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

In this post, we offer some excellent WordPress Tutorials that will help you to increase your on-site engagement so that you can promote your jobs that will result in a higher rate of conversion and engagement.

1. Click to Tweet WP Tutorial

If you are a WordPress user who wants to increase your engagement levels with your target audience, you may get some good tips out of this tutorial by KickStart Commerce. This is a short, but content-filled video tutorial and the author shows you how to install a WordPress plugin that will allow you to insert the “click to tweet” function within your WordPress page.

2. Responsive WordPress Tutorial

This video tutorial shows you how to create a responsive WordPress page that will increase your level of engagement by creating a more responsive website with the WordPress platform. The video will take you through all of the steps required to create a better WordPress site so that you can get more engagement on your posts. Keep in mind that this tutorial teaches you how to do it from scratch so you’ll only want to do this if you plan to learn to create your own WP templates or plugins. Also, you will have to go to the WordPress.org site that has the downloadable link rather than the WordPress.com hosted site.

3. Ecommerce website on WordPress

This is a very detailed video tutorial by katrinah.com where she shows you in great detail how to create a new WordPress eCommerce website. There is a lot of detail involved in setting up an eCommerce site so that’s why this video is longer than many you’ll come across. Be prepared to watch for two hours and forty-five minutes if you want to watch this tutorial. But you should get a lot out of it. Remember that building eCommerce capabilities into your WordPress site will significantly increase your level of engagement.

4. How to Track User Engagement for WP

In this tutorial, you’ll find out how to track user engagement for WordPress using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a helpful and complex tool that allows you to x-ray how your sites, blogs, and other online pages are doing with your target audience. This tutorial will teach you how to track, analyze, and monitor audience behaviors and make the most of your online traffic while boosting engagement. The Google Analytics tool can be focused primarily on engagement if you prefer so that you can target those behaviors that are most likely to result in higher levels of engagement.

5. Creating Better, Faster, and More Optimized WP Sites

In this insightful tutorial, you’ll learn how to create better, faster, and more optimized WP pages. When you increase the quality and speed of your site, you also increase the level of engagement. This informative online tutorial by Smashing Magazine will show you how to do that with tips that will help you to maximize your time and effort in the right places.

6. How to Change a WordPress Theme

This tutorial will show you how to change your WordPress theme or install or reactivate another theme within WordPress. This is an important skill because it enables you to change your theme anytime without a lot of hassles in trying to figure it out. When you find that your page is not getting the level of on-site engagement that it should, try changing your theme to something more exciting. You may be amazed at the level of results you’ll get.

7. Genesis Yearly Template Tutorial

This tutorial shows how you can install a plugin that will allow you to list all posts for the year in a systematic manner. The posts are listed in a grid that displays all of the different featured posts of the year so that they can easily be located. This might appeal to some of your readers who want to go back and find a post on a topic that interested them, and it is a convenience and a service for your customers.

Remember, adding value to your post or your WP system, in general, is going to add value to the customer’s experience and that is what will ultimately result in higher on-site engagement levels.

7. How to Start a Blog Using WordPress

The most common use for WordPress is obvious — which is to start a new website or blog. With more nearly 30% of all websites and blogs on the internet today using WordPress as their CMS to run their sites, we are continuing to see not only more sites rely on WordPress, but also new individuals getting started with a site of their own daily.

Thanks to various how to start a blog guides across the internet and quite similar to the one we see at BlogNinja, it’s extremely easy for anyone to go live with a site of their own, even if they never have before. These simple step-by-step tutorials make the process of registering a domain name, setting up web hosting and installing WordPress a breeze.

9. Mastering WordPress Navigation Menus

This tutorial is more than one tutorial. It is a compilation of 15 more tutorials that will allow you to gain insight into how to master the navigation menus on the WordPress platform. Why is this important for social engagement? Well, remember a little something called the customer journey and web responsiveness and engagement? Well, it will all come together and increase all of these things if you can create a navigation menu that people like. Remember to make it user-friendly and responsive to mobile users as well.

10. Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress

If you want to know how to increase your level of on-site engagement, you need also to take a look at how you are encouraging off-site engagement. Even if your goal is to increase on-site activity among customers, you will want to place share buttons on your site to share your content off-site as well. Why? Because people look for this when they find something they are interested in online and they want to share it on their social media pages. Check out this tutorial by Code Canyon on this topic to learn more.

11. WordPress 101

f you just need to go back to the basics and pick up on anything you missed the first time around, here is a great basic WordPress tutorial for you. You’ll find lots of helpful tips and tricks plus an overall view of what WordPress can do for your site or blog.

Where to put it?

Once you have the knowledge to increase your level of engagement on your WP site and you have built your WP site to your liking, you’ll need to think about where to put it. WordPress is meant to be a standalone platform. However, you can do more.

If you have us build your website at webdesignteam.com, we can incorporate your WP website into our web server quickly and easily at no extra fuss. Just talk to one of our seasoned expert web designers to learn more.

We design custom-made WP and other types of sites professionally and smoothly with the use of our vast array of tools, expert coders, and engineers. You’ll be amazed.

Check us out at webdesignteam.com and get your free quote today.

Hurry! The world can’t wait to see what you have to say.

The post 11 WordPress Tutorials to Increase On-Site Engagement appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

WordPress has so many features that sometimes it’s hard to know about them all. So, in this post, we’ll take a look at 10 WordPress features you may not know that you may want to use to form your website or blog.

WordPress Hidden Features: Top Secret Clearance Only

1. Show/Hide Items Using the Screen Options Menu– There is a screen option menu that you may or may not have noticed before on WP. What this does is that it allows you to show or hide items on the WordPress admin screen that you are viewing. This feature allows you to control how your admin pages work which gives you more control over the entire WP editing experience.

2. Accessibility Mode for WP Widgets– This feature allows you to have access to your WP widgets without having to drag and drop the items with your mouse. You can activate this unique feature by clicking on the Screen Options button on the Appearance-Widgets choice.

3. Move, Delete, or Add Dashboard Widgets– When you use WordPress, you are automatically directed to the dashboard page when you log in. But you can rearrange the dashboard boxes to make the WP experience more convenient and more comfortable to use. When you click on the Screen Options button, you can hide or show the boxes or drag and drop them to rearrange them the way that you use WordPress.

4. Paste a URL to Create Links in the Visual Editor– If you want to paste a URL in the visual editor, you can do this by using the link editing feature of the visual editor. Instead of using a popup to paste the link, just select the text and press CTRL+V to paste the URL. When you do this, the visual editor will automatically convert it to a relationship.

5. Editing Images in WordPress– WordPress is a great platform for a number of reasons. It allows you to edit images with the WP platform quickly and easily. But what you may not know is that you can do this easier by going to Media-Library and click on any image. In the image edit mode, you can perform some actions including crop, rotate, and resize. You’ll also be able to flip an image in horizontal or vertical directions so you can work with it easier.

6. Preview Themes Before Activation– Have you ever gone into WordPress to try out a different theme, selected the theme and applied it, then decided you don’t want it? Well, no worries. You can use the test theme feature by installing your theme and then going to Appearance-Themes. Once there, you’ll see a live preview of your chosen theme so you can try it out before activating it. Do this by clicking on the Live Preview option, and you’ll see the theme customizer that will show you the new theme in preview mode.

7. Create Posts for Multiple Pages– If you have a longer post that you want to split into multiple pages, add the “next page” tag in your post, and this will allow you to split it into multiple pages of text. This avoids your readers from having to scroll too much, which is a problem with extra long posts. For more information on how to do this, check out the WP main page for help or click this link to a tutorial.

8. Embed Links, Videos, or Multimedia Files– Do you remember when we all went crazy trying to figure out how to embed music, videos, and other media into a web page? Some of us stayed up til 3 am learning code, while others just stole the code from others who had already figured it out. Well, with WP, there is much less hassle. All you have to do is to embed the code from the URL from a supported site such as YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, or other compatible sites and it will work on WP. You can even post a link from another WP post.

9. Hidden Secret Options Page in WordPress– Did you know that there is a hidden options page for WP blogs? It is hidden because some users need help using this section and it’s easy to mess up the structure of your page with this option. You can access this URL by going to http://example.com/wp-admin/options.php.

10. Markdown and Keyboard Shortcuts: To Compose Faster– If you want to compose posts at a faster pace, you can use keyboard shortcuts to speed up the process. Using Markdown formatting shortcuts allows you to have text converted into HTML quickly and easily. Below are some of the shortcuts you can use to do this.

WordPress shortcuts,

• Using * or – will start an unordered list.
• Using 1. or 1) will start an ordered list.
• Using # will transform into h1. ## for h2, ### for h3 and so on.
• Using > will transform into a blockquote.

Why Check Out these Hidden Features?

Well, there you have it: 10 WordPress features you may not have known existed. Why is this important? It’s not important unless you are a WordPress user. But if you like WordPress and use it regularly for your website or blog, you’ll want to try these to save time and to make your WP experience better. Go to the WP website to learn more about the special features that are available. Also, you may want to try out some of the WordPress plugins which offer even more flexibility and special features that you can check out.

How to Integrate WordPress with your Current Web Server or Website

How about those who are using WordPress but want to integrate the WP platform within their web server? Not a problem if you call on us. We are webdesignteam.com, and we can integrate your WP themes and websites into our web server. You can have the “best of both worlds” by being able to use the technology that so many people love about WordPress while also having a stunning, professional website created that you will be proud of.

Contact us to learn more, and we’ll schedule a time to talk to you about your web design. We design websites for WordPress users, as well as any other platform. We do special coding, too including Zoomla, HTML, CSS, and more. If you want an awesome professional website, call us. We can help! We look forward to hearing from you.

Visit us today at webdesignteam.com.

The post 10 WordPress Features You Probably Didn’t Know About appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

Pepsi is also a well-known brand and while it has not been able to beat the Coca-Cola company in many ways for branding, it’s still a brand that needs no introduction.

Both brands started in a world much different than the world we live in today. It was full of real-world advertisements in newspapers and videos, analog radio and TV ads, and other branding tools that had to be created in the physical world.

Now, we have the online, digital world, a world that is endless in possibilities and includes websites, blogs, and other digital assets that are designed to increase branding in the virtual environment.

No one can deny that the website of a brand is the most important part of this mix. No matter how good your podcasts, videos, and other assets are, your website should stand out.

When we look at the websites of these two big brands, we can learn a lot by comparing them and evaluating what makes them great.

Coca-Cola

When you first come to Coca-Cola’s website, you are greeted with an attractive, minimalist design that focuses on what the brand is about: Coke. It’s interesting that the Coca-Cola brand focuses solely on the soft drink on their website because most of their other advertising deviates from this notion.

Instead, their videos on YouTube and other digital media seem to focus more on the personality of the business rather than the drink itself. The idea in most of their ads is to “share a Coke” with others. This theme is still prevalent on their website, but first the customer sees a statement about their product in which they say, “The refreshing taste of Coca-Cola beverages paired with new and rewarding experiences.”

This seems to create a marriage between the great-tasting Coca-Cola product and the personality of the brand which seems to be all about sharing and caring.

As you scroll down the site, you’ll also see two of the staff of the Coca-Cola company, one dressed in a server’s hat. The video featuring these two talks about who the Coca-Cola company is as it relates to their staff.

They create a community-based, staff-friendly message for the brand and it communicates that the company truly cares about their people who work for them.

Further down the page is a section dedicated to Christmas and holiday offerings, which the Coca-Cola company has always been actively involved in, featuring contests and other things that seem to add to their customer value.

There are other opportunities offered to their customers who visit their website such as mobile app downloads and games, product facts, and more.

The site is modern while also traditional, simple but stocked with value. This reflects the dedication the company seems to have to both the physical product they create and the human side of the business.

Pepsi

The Pepsi site is also very interesting. When you come onto their site, you are instantly greeted with a tidal wave of Pepsi flowing out of a can of their popular drink that seems to almost pour over the sides of the can and down your desktop or mobile device. This gets the visitor’s attention, no doubt in a big way and lists the following adjectives as complete sentences at the top of the page:

CRISP. SMOOTH. REFRESHING.

Notice the break away from proper grammatical form such as the all caps lettering and the period at the end of these words for emphasis.

If that isn’t enough, after you’ve taken a bath in the virtual Pepsi flow, scrolling down the page, you’ll get a lesson in the history of the Pepsi company. It also offers you a chance to shop on either of these stores: Amazon.com or Walmart.com. So you can shop for all Pepsi products with your favorite online conglomerate.

After this, you’ll see a quick tutorial on how to create a unique “mixed drink” composed of liqueur, Pepsi-Cola, and a lemon that is garnished on the side. It features a can of the 1893 first edition of Pepsi that is mixed with the liquer that was used years ago to create mixed drinks. Wow! We assume this section is for adults only.

Lower down the page, you’ll see a number of social media options that allow you to connect with them through a variety of options such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.

Comparing the Two Sites

When we go back and look at the Coca-Cola site again, we can see several comparisons to Pepsi such as the large, dynamic imagery and bold colors, the impactful wording, and such like. It’s almost as if the two brands have looked at each other’s sites. (Who reading this articles doesn’t know that they did!) Anyway, they are similar but they both feature some different approaches to their brand that seem to communicate to the viewer right away what the brand is about.

Our Ranking System

When trying to decide which one is best, we set up a short point system that included the following aspects:

1. Ease of navigation- Coke: 4 Pepsi: 4
2. Customer journey-friendly Coke: 5 Pepsi: 5
3. Interesting and engaging Coke: 5 Pepsi: 5
4. Interactivity Coke: 4 Pepsi: 5
5. Connection to social media Coke: 4 Pepsi: 5
6. Branding aspects- Coke: 5 Pepsi: 5

The Coca-Cola site has strong branding, as does the Pepsi site, so we gave them both one point for this. A visitor could go on both of these sites and know what the brand is about. So they both scored a 5/5 on this aspect of their design.

On point #1, ease of navigation, they were both easy to navigate. But, because we don’t always prefer the scroll only mode, we gave both sites a 4/5 on this aspect.

Both sites should score a 5/5 on the customer journey, as well as #3 (interesting and engaging) because of the high level of engagement that both sites provide. Where it started breaking down a bit was the level of interactivity and connection to social media. These are two of the most important aspects of a site as you want part of the customer journey to take the customer to other places where you have some digital assets such as Facebook or Twitter. Pepsi got a 5/5 on this part of our ranking, while Coke got a 4/5. This is because Coke just featured the links to their social media in a place near the bottom that was barely conspicuous and Pepsi seemed to make it a main feature of their page.

Using our simple scales on these factors alone, Pepsi scored a 29 and Coke scored a 27 due to the less prominent social media section.

This alone is not much but if you believe that social media is a major part of branding, you would want to follow the example of Pepsi in this example, rather than Coke. However, both sites are doing very well and seem to both reflect some of the most important aspects of their brand.

Where We Come In

Need a website design of your own? Even if you’re not Coke or Pepsi, you need a smart design that will capture the attention of your target audience, draw people in and get them to engage.

We can help. We are webdesignteam.com and we have years of experience in smart web designs. Visit us online and ask for a free quote. Everything great starts with one step.

The post Coke vs. Pepsi – Who has a Better Website Design? appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

In short, WordPress has completely changed the way websites, blogs, and businesses are created on the internet today.

With all of that in mind, we wanted to reach out to some of the biggest names in the industry and get their thoughts on how WordPress will continue to dominate the online landscape in 2018, and what changes or updates we should all be on the lookout for.

WordPress in 2019: Expert Tips and Feedback You Need to See

I’m not sure of anything new that WordPress will do in 2018. It will continue to popularize website maintenance and updates.

Any business worth its salt will still need to outsource design elements. And if they are smart, they’ll outsource their content creation, too. But more and more small businesses will realize that they don’t need a “webmaster” to update their calendar, add a photo to a gallery or even tweak their page content. They’ll need a programmer only when something goes wrong.

This isn’t something new, but I believe it is increasing and will continue to do so for several years.

David Leonhardt – THGMWriters.com

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WordPress is simply the foundation of your website or blog and you can utilize this powerful platform to bring traffic to your site by creating content that reflects your business goals. With visual builders and the plethora of themes available to customize, you can now create landing pages and marketing websites in record time.

Jacob Cass – JustCreative.com

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Take a look at WordPress today and you will see a common thread amongst most users — they are all looking to utilize the ‘out of the box’ ease of use and power that WordPress has to offer. The problem here is that most users only focus on the basics and never move beyond the few plugins or themes that are heavily promoted or recommended. The real value in WordPress comes when you start to implement a customized look and feel to your site, while also focusing on your user engagement and content at the same time. The last step in this process is to really focus on the promotion of your site. You can have the nicest looking WordPress theme and great content, but without the right promotion, your site will be no better than anyone in the mix of the more than 300 million WordPress blogs on the internet today.

Ninja Blog Master – Blogninja.com

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WordPress core team is working on a brand new editor called Gutenberg which will make it even easier for new users to get started and publish their content. It will allow plugins to build deeper integrations with the editor and offer a more pleasant overall user experience.

Syed Balkhi – WPBeginner.com

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WordPress really changed the way I look at websites when I first used it way back in 2006. Back then it was “Blogging software”, if you wanted a blog – you got WordPress, it was simple. Not even a year after we started putting up “Blogs” for people – we realized “Oh, wait, this can actually be an entire website!”. For years after that, you heard WordPress Website, even today most websites are just WordPress sites. However recently, and into 2018 and beyond I believe more and more installs of WordPress are going to be more than just websites, they are essentially web apps. You have forums powered by WordPress, specialty sites with lots of custom coding powered by WordPress, why not apps? Why not mobile apps? Why not use WordPress as a framework to power almost anything – that is where we are headed with WordPress. I know I’m not the only one that has felt that my sites, and content, were formed around the capabilities that WordPress had in the past, and in the future I believe we will start to mold WordPress around those ideas (now that we have a grasp on the technology), and not the other way around.

Andy Sowards – AndySowards.com

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Being in the web hosting and cloud data storage space, we are seeing a much higher demand for ‘WordPress dedicated’ hosting plans and support from our clients. While the average hosting plan is likely more than enough to power your average WP site, having a higher value and premium WP hosting plan can actually help your site run much faster and smoother — which can also help with search rankings and user experience. At the same time, with so many different components running behind the scenes all of the time on a WordPress-powered site, there is a lot of potential for server overloads and potential slowdowns. We are constantly making sure we not only keep up with the needs of our hosting clients but also WordPress and it’s evolving changes over time as well. This is something every WP-focused web hosting provider and online business should be considering as well.

Ivan Dimitrov – pCloud.com

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The Gutenberg project is the biggest change coming in early 2018 to WordPress. Gutenberg is the name for the new WordPress editor and the changes are significant. Some of the biggest changes that I’m excited for i text pasted from Word will get reformatted instantly and be more compatible. I’m also looking forward to the focus on “writing first” and is trying to provide a less distracting environment. Gutenberg feels more modern than the existing editor and is more contextual. Simple tables are much easier to add to your content. Gutenberg is presently in BETA but you can expect it to become part of the native core of WordPress within a year. If you are launching a new website, it might be a good idea to install the beta now to ensure compatibility with the future.

Rick Ramos – HealthJoy.com

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Even more multimedia integration. As content moves more towards social media, and less from search engine traffic, multimedia tools such as cinemagraphs are becoming an extremely great way to utilize video and imagery with a mobile focus. Unlike a traditional photograph, a cinemagraph has the added factor of motion, whilst a video might take a long time to load on a mobile phone and may not be as easily integrated. Keeping in tune with the 2017 minimalist approach to web design, 2018 might turn into the year of the cinemagraph!

Cody McLain – SupportNinja.com

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I think WordPress in 2018 will be dominated by one thing: Gutenberg. The new WordPress editor is due to drop in the first quarter of 2018, and it has gone through an extremely quick development cycle, it’s ready to go fairly soon. It’s designed to be something similar to how Wix and Squarespace handle content, and could see the end eventually of things like the customiser and widgets as WordPress moves to a content block layout.

Right now, it’s available to be played with in public beta, so I would recommend everybody to install it and try and break it. It’s coming, and there will be bugs or things that won’t work well. If you can look into it at this stage you may be able to get your changes implemented before release. This is a vital time for the future of WordPress, I strongly recommend you jump on board.

Rhys Wynne – Winwar Media

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WordPress is just an amazing platform. I am thankful that we can have an open source tool such as WordPress that allows everyone to create their own site online and spread the word to anyone in the whole world. The best way WordPress can continue to help people achieve their goals in 2018 is not by revolutionizing everything about itself but just to continue being focused on what makes it great. And that’s being the easy way to let people publish content online.

Marko Saric – HowToMakeMyBlog.com

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WordPress should be the main focus point for all businesses and brands on the internet today. For ourselves, we are continually seeing more individuals and brands jump into the world of WordPress, and seeing a lot of success with it. The majority of our site sales and freelance design work is focused towards site owners that are working on the WordPress platform. It’s already a great CMS out of the box, but when you start hiring freelancers to make it even more unique and customized, then you really start to see the power that lies with WordPress and what is possible.

Joe Daley – Logomyway.com

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Be yourself through live broadcasts. Being yourself resonates strongest with like-minded viewers. This is the most powerful form of targeting because authenticity attracts like-minded viewers who appreciate your delivery. Live video is the wave of the present and the future. In a microwave culture where everybody wants their stuff yesterday, live broadcasts offer a glimpse into the now. Live videos on Facebook, Periscope, and YouTube also make viewers feel like they are part of the production, giving them a voice as they interact with producers in real time. Whether now or in 2018, authentic video producers using live broadcasts to spread the word will always resonate with individuals who appreciate their genuine nature.

Ryan Biddulph – BloggingFromParadise.com

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WordPress has completely leveled out the playing field when it comes to content creation, traffic and growing a business on the internet these days. In the past, if you wanted to start an online business, you would need to hire a designer and someone to create content for your site. Now, anyone can go live with a WordPress powered site of their own in just a few minutes. While it’s easy to start a site, it’s also going to take some time and learning to master the art of making money online and building a legitimate business. This is something we are currently working on with many different bloggers and brands — not only helping them with making the right connections, but also allowing them to earn instant revenue in the process. With so many people going live with a WP site of their own, I think we are going to see continued monetization-based services and online learning for these new site owners and audiences.

Itai Elizur – InboundJunction.com

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When most people look at WordPress, they think they are instantly going to have a site live and start ranking in the search results right away. While this is somewhat true, the real truth behind all of this is that it’s going to take a lot of work, content, and backlinks to make all of that possible. This is mainly due to all of the competition that is out there on the internet these days. However, there are ways to get an edge with a WordPress site and choosing the right hosting plans. A perfect example of this can be seen with our “WordPress-Focused” hosting plans that are built specifically for site owners that like to use WordPress. Not all web hosting is the same, and as more people start to truly understand how web hosting and WordPress work, I think we will continue to see more WP-focused services going live in 2018.

Corey Hammond – A2Hosting.com

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WordPress has become the “gold standard” of website platforms in 2017, and the trend only looks to continue in the coming years.

Many self-heralded experts declare, “If you create good content, people will find it,” and millions of WordPress blogs hit the internet every day as a result.

The problem is that if everyone is creating good content, what will Google use to differentiate the good from the truly great content pieces?

The answer to this question is why WordPress users will evolve their content creation to a more “Quality over Quantity” content model in 2018 and beyond.

If you want to get ahead of the curve, create one great piece of content and market it online! Get backlinks and shares with your piece of content, and it will outrank your competition.

WordPress users are generally naive to this truth today, but as time goes on, you’re going to hear “quality beats quantity when it comes to producing content.”

Just remember that you heard it here first!

Andrew Lowen – NextLevelWeb.com

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Building a business around WordPress is where I see a lot more attention being spent in 2018. This is really a no-brainer when you look at the recent growth numbers of WordPress. With it being the site platform of choice for more than 27% of the sites on the internet, how could you not focus your efforts on something that so many people are already using?

I personally started using WordPress back in 2007, and it’s completely changed the way I create websites and content on the internet today. After seeing firsthand how powerful it can actually be, it’s easy for me to preach and build online businesses and services around the same focus.

Zac Johnson – ZacJohnson.com

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WordPress now powers more than a 1/3rd of the Internet. For most people, that’s just a piece of trivia. But powering 1/3rd of the Internet means that WordPress is now so big that it shapes not only the way WordPress sites are created – but also how the other 70% of the Internet is created. In any market, if a product achieves a certain level of adoption, then it can use its strength to shape other competitors. Look at the iPhone for an example. In 2018 and beyond, anything that WordPress adopts or does not adopt will define decisions for users of other products. If WordPress makes AMP standard, then other products will either have to adopt AMP – or they will have to defend their reason to not adopt AMP. Same with editor UIs, site networks, security approaches, etc – site and content creators will have to choose features that are either “just like WordPress” or are “not like WordPress because [X]”. Site and content creators will need to carefully define what their actual needs & goals are – rather than choosing off a menu that is defined by WordPress.

Nathan Shivar – ShivarWeb.com

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WordPress has been one of the most preferred website development frameworks so far. It provides an unimaginable flexibility to the designers as well as the users too. Anyone with minimal technical knowledge can actually operate WordPress sites with enhanced ease for the flexibility that it offers.

The innumerable plugins and the astonishing themes that are part of WordPress is something that makes it the designer’s favorite. In fact, the truth is that there is no limiting WordPress with more and more people preferring it to build their E-commerce websites too.

In the year 2018, we can expect WordPress to provide further flexibility to development agencies and developers alike, with the interactive templates that they can embed with their WordPress platforms, which will further enable the clients to make or deploy changes without affecting the other parts of the design. Very soon, users will be able to build the sites that they have always dreamt of.

Vipin Nayar – Acodez

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For me, the biggest trend I see in WordPress as the moment is in drag and drop page builders. They are not only enabling people to create stunning looking websites but also empowering people with little to no web design skills.

Of course, where there is great power there is also responsibility and we need to make sure people are educated enough to produce the awesome website they had imagined :> Tools are only a means to an end. But the possibilities are now endless, and fast!

To try to help people with such tools as Thrive Architect, one of the better page builders around, I have been producing a lot of content on my youtube channel you can pop over and check out Madlemmings on Youtube.

Ashley Faulkes – Madlemmings.com

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WordPress is the most popular CMS and as such, the majority of content marketers are familiar with how to navigate its tools and functions. This makes it fast and easy for content teams to get up and running quickly so they can spend more time focusing on tactics and less on figuring out the tools.

William Harris – Elumynt

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If you are reading this and don’t already know WordPress is, in fact, the defacto CMS (Content Management System) in the world and continues to become more widely used by the day. With every new update of WordPress, the CMS becomes more user-friendly. With the upcoming Gutenberg release on the horizon, the WordPress editor is undergoing a major overhaul.

Apart from the constant updates being made to the core WordPress system, third-party plugin developers continue to create amazing add-ons and enhancements which make building a website with WordPress a possibility for even the most technologically impaired amongst us. I’m now referring specifically to “Visual WordPress Editors” like Thrive Architect, Divi, Elementor, and the like.

Before about five or six years ago you really needed to employ a designer and developer if you wanted to have a professional looking and functioning website. Today with the advent of visual editors anyone and I really mean just about everyone can with a little practice create top of the line beautiful websites with advanced dynamic functionality.

I think the days of needing to hire a team of people to create advanced websites is coming to an end. Short of enterprise level sites just about anyone will be able to build a professional website on their own. I think the effects of this are being seen most profoundly within alternative news/journalism sites and with the combination of social media and blogs we sharing world events with millions of people almost instantaneously. I don’t think we truly understand the impact this is having on the power structures in the world but I think it’s accelerating a major shift in our evolution as a global society.

Mike Brown – The Blogging Buddha

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WordPress is making the process of connecting with sites owners, bloggers and online businesses a whole lot easier. Something that we are continuing to see is the developement of new services and businesses powered through WordPress plugins. Once a business has created such a plugin to power their business, they pretty much open the doors for being able to work with anyone. For site owners, this is also extremely easy, as they all know how simple it is to install a WordPress plugin and add in any specific account details or command codes. Expect to see more businesses adopting WordPress plugins into their business in 2018.

Tim Bourquin – Afteroffers.com

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I think the way WordPress could change is they could bring Google AMP into the core function this could impact the functionality of sites. That being said, I think it might be an add-on option.

It would also be good to see WordPress push more video content and potentially integrate platforms such as Canva into the core offering. This could be valuable for users who are looking for images for content quickly and or looking to create basic infographics for posts.

James Norquay – Prosperity Media

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WordPress is the number one platform for building websites for a reason it is built for change. With thousands of plugins and themes, WordPress is incredibly flexible and adapts to new players in the web development space. For example, Shopify’s popularity didn’t cause a mass exodus from WordPress because there
was a plugin that allowed people to maintain their WordPress sites and gain the functionality of Shopify. In the WordPress world we will say, “there is a plugin for that”.

Another advantage of WordPress has been its portability. Moving from one server to another or doing a complete redesign can be disastrous in other platforms whereas in WordPress it can be as simple as doing an export and import or updating the theme. It is for these reasons that WordPress is the industry leader and will remain so for far into the future, 2018 and beyond.

Allan Pollett – AllanPollett.com

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Even with the WordPress development market as flooded as it already is, I still think we are going to see more improvements and businesses jump into this space. It’s really a no brainer, especially when you look at how many sites are being powered by WordPress today. This is just going to be a supply and demand issue, and the demand just keeps on rising as more individuals, brands, and businesses continue to focus their efforts on using WordPress to power their sites.

Brandon Johnston – BlogReign.com

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WordPress is wonderful because it offers everything that both a beginner and experienced webmaster could ask for – usability, security, features,
design, and so on. Even features that aren’t native to WordPress can be added through plugins, so it’s clear why more and more websites are utilizing all of the functionality that it offers.

One of the greatest things I’m excited about is the fact that WordPress is becoming even easier to set up and get going with – many web hosts these days even have WordPress installations that can be done in only a few clicks. This means that anybody can now get their site up and
running right away, without needing any technical, programming, or design knowledge.

I believe there are a lot of people out there with wonderful ideas, but hold those ideas back because they feel unable to create a platform
(such as a blog) to share everything on.

Just like the first true personal computers made computing available to the masses, WordPress is doing the same sort of thing for webmasters.

James McAllister – Starlight-Baby.com
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WordPress is constantly making changes and improvements to their platform. My prediction for the future is that they will strive to create plugins that are all-in-one (that can perform many functions), which will make websites more lightweight.
With the rise of video-making and video usage by consumers, this will incorporate changes to how media is handled by WordPress.
I also predict that more sites are going to be created with WordPress because of its ease of use. It’s not difficult to learn how to blog on WordPress, it’s easy to create a blog post, and it’s simple to know if a post is good and meets SEO standards (especially if you use the Yoast SEO plugin!).
All of my sites are created using WordPress, and I have to say that I love this platform very much!
What’s great is that WordPress also offers a free platform to bloggers who are just starting out and are unsure if they want to invest the money and the time into having their own hosted website.

Lorraine Reguly – WordingWell.com

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I think we’ll see more Artificial Intelligence or machine learning moving into the content creation space in 2018. It’s been poised to really jump off in the last year or so. That doesn’t mean I think that machines will be writing all content by the end of the year. But I do think that we’ll see a lot more AI based tools, designs, and plugins out there that can help people with specific tasks. That might mean making content more SEO friendly in a way that also keeps it reader friendly. And we can see more plugins or tools devoted to things like easily creating user generated content, better organizing content, and tracking the content that users respond to. There’s of potential out there for this stuff and I know there are already plugins gaining traction now. I expect that we’ll see a lot more of these in 2018 that everyone will be talking about.

Sean Ogle – LocationRebel.com

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When it comes to creating a website, there are many guides and tutorials to get it up and running. But creating content for that website, and your social media and other marketing campaigns is an entirely different beast.

Of the more than 40,000 different plugins for WordPress, there are a few that standout as clear winners for the content creation process in 2018 and beyond:

• CoSchedule – This comprehensive editorial calendar allows you to not only plan and organize your WordPress and social media content, it also allows you to post, schedule, track, and analyze your content.
• WP Keyword Suggest – SEO is a key component of any content marketing strategy, and this plugin makes keyword research a lot easier. It suggests up to 250 keywords ideas based on data from the major search engines.
• Easy Content Templates – Once you have planned your content, and researched keywords, all that’s left to do is create and publish, right? But if you ever find yourself in need of a little extra help, these content templates can make your writing process a lot faster and easier.

Shane Barker – ShaneBarker.com
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WordPress is easy to use and I’ve been using it since I started blogging. Yes, self-hosted WordPress platform costs you some money (from buying domain to hosting it on other hosting services) but it’s worth every penny.

The best part about using WordPress is that, you can get access to a ton of plugins that can range from content to selling products to SEO. That’s what the fun is all about. Even if you’re a beginner, you’ll find it easy to create content in a better way, thanks to WordPress!

Anil Agarwal – BloggersPassion.com

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WordPress is exactly what we used to build our website and it continues to be one of the easiest platforms to develop your “store front” for businesses across the globe. They are already working in this direction but the more automation and tools that businesses need are made available and easy to implement, the better businesses can grow whether via content SEO and conversion optimization, cleaning up the backend code that tends to get messy over the lifetime of a business and website as many different people are involved as a company restructures and grows. I think WordPress will get better with getting the best content shared easily while also enabling seamless integration with payment gateways, especially in light of cryptocurrencies as a hot emerging form of digital currency and payment methods.

Andrea Loubier – GetMailBird.com

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There will be a lot more room for personalization. Social media integration and sharing plugins will become huge. I do also think that many video embedding and sharing plugins for WordPress will become much more popular soon. WordPress might also be seeing more and more plugins which analyze content and rates it on its cohesiveness and readability.

Rafi Chowdhury – Chowdhurysdigital.com

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I love WordPress. Great question. The cool thing about WordPress is that its Post / Page system acts as a great offline publishing system in and of itself. Meaning, you can take your good old time drafting 1, 2, 10, or 100 posts across multiple users at your leisure. Since its all technically “cloud” based (hosted on your domain actually) you can draft your content, text, images etc switch devices and pick up where you left off. Really, there is no need to even use word-processing software etc just use WP!

Second, WP as a framework is getting more and more capable. WP itself is fast and efficient, its the themes and plugins that make it slow. Projects like “AMP” is enabling WP to position itself to be a leader in the community. As an agency owner I’ll continue to look to WordPress and the community for sites we build for clients and for ourselves. One of my favorite features of WordPress has nothing to do with the framework itself, its the community. I know if something is broke, there are 100’s or 1000’s of other people out there that went through the same thing and can weigh in on multiple different solutions. Thanks for reading everyone! Hit me up on Twitter @pmkoom if you want to connect!

Patrick Coombe – Elite-strategies.com

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The obvious answer here is that it will get easier. If we look at tools like WIX that have an artificial intelligence site builder we can already get an idea of what the future looks like. My take is that for many smaller businesses the more technical elements of website design will go away to some degree. It will just get easier and easier to create sites using tools like the cloud based WordPress.com. Elements like technical SEO will to a large degree be taken care of without much thinking on the part of the webmaster. And, we will see the focus being more on traditional marketing of the business rather than the technical elements of web design and digital marketing. So in a nutshell, they will make it easier for smaller businesses who need a customisable off-the-shelf solution.

Marcus Miller – Bowlerhat.co.uk

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Aside from the continual development Automatic are making to WordPress, some of the best developments for content creators come from third parties, developing for WordPress’s open source platform. Here are two:

Drag and drop themes – A growing number of ‘drag and drop’ theme builders will make blog customisation simpler and put control into the hands of content creators.

Plugins – Development of plugins like Wordable.io will continue to allow creators to write in the applications they love (example Google Docs) and easily push their content to WordPress.

James Reynolds – SEOSherpa.com

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Google and Facebook control the distribution of traffic, whether we like it or not. While you may “own” your website, you are still dependent upon the algorithms to drive traffic to your site, whether you pay or rank for it. That said, both networks have said that site speed is critical to showing up in the search results or feed. And that means in 2018, we have to adopt Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and Facebook Instant Articles.

For those that don’t know, this is native caching, where Google or Facebook are pre-caching your website content, so it can load instantly when users click on your stuff in the SERPS or feed. Many foolishly argue we’re losing “control” of our websites by handing our content to Google and Facebook. In fact, the opposite is true. They’re still referencing your website url as the canonical (the source of record) and you get to keep your tracking tags.

I used to run analytics at Yahoo!, so we can go on and on about what people misunderstand about search engine operations. Guess what, when they present the user with the search results page, it’s cached results from the last time they crawled that url on your site, anyway. So you might as well do whatever you can to play by their rules, make it easy for your content to be discovered/loaded, and give the user a fast experience.

Dennis Yu – BlitzMetrics.com

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Content is being democratised. Tools like Canva let us create great images, YouTube lets us publish our video all for free and WordPress is helping everyone to create content on par with professional publications. If you’ve got the talent and the ideas the tools don’t really matter anymore.

I can see WordPress making our lives a lot easier over the next 12 months. Even going back a year ago I found people still hitting pain points with the editor and media gallery but a lot of these problems have been addressed and its easier than ever to create great content.

Jon Tromans – Jtid.co.uk

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If you haven’t heard WordPress is preparing to release a new post building experience called Gutenberg. The new Gutenberg editor will allow you to drag and drop blocks and create a post with images, block quotes, tweets, galleries, etc with ease and require no technical knowledge.

This is just the first step of what will eventually be a complete page builder for WordPress. Soon you will be able to build pages and posts in WordPress similar to how you would build a website with Wix and SquareSpace.

The new Gutenberg project would make it super easy to create a new website in WordPress which is kinda of difficult for someone with no WordPress experience at the moment. It will also, in my opinion, far exceed the current website building experiences in the previously mentioned services.

If you are looking for the best page builder for WordPress right now, I suggest Beaver Builder. There is currently a huge community for this 3rd party page builder and lots of “blocks” you can use to build pages. But the future of WordPress is Gutenberg.

John Turner – SeedProd.com

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I’ve been on WordPress for more than a decade, so I believe in 2018, we’ll see continuations of the same trends that have been driving the platform for years. I expect we’ll see new and better plugins that facilitate all aspects of content marketing, along with integrations between other apps and services to make the system as seamless as possible for webmasters.

Some of that will happen through third-party WordPress developers; other changes will come through new integrations built into tools like Zapier, IFTTT and Autopilot. I don’t think we’re that far off from a future where managing content marketing and other digital campaigns will happen within a single dashboard, rather than requiring marketers to track siloed data across multiple tools.

Aaron Agius – Louder.Online

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With a great community of expert developers behind the project, I am sure that WordPress will continue to change and evolve to face the new challenges that the near future is bringing very soon now.

Google is betting heavily on Artificial Intelligence, Semantic Web and Mobile and Voice Search which will definitely change the search engine landscape in 2018 and how people consume content every day.

This is where the guys behind WordPress will make it easier for us bloggers and website owners to adapt to these upcoming changes and keep creating quality content that meets the requirements of future technological advances and our users’ and visitors’ (increasingly demanding) expectations.

Mike Martyns – SoccerGearHQ.com

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Video will continue to trend in 2018 and beyond.

This is for many reasons:

1. People no longer have to be in their own videos. The self-conscious and tongue-tied can enter the Video Age (which we are now in) without concern.
2. Google likes a variety of media on blog posts. Video adds to the variety. Posts don’t just consist of text when a video is included.
3. Including a video helps our bounce rates. The longer the video, the longer people stay on the blog.
4. Videos help the visual learners understand information that no longer consists of just text.
5. Video helps marketers. People trust people they can see and are more likely to buy from the people who do include themselves in their videos. There are other videos where you can just include an audio (again, for the self-conscious types).

What does all this have to do with WordPress?
WordPress has the capacity to include media. Click “Add Media.” Click “Insert from URL” and paste the link to your video.

Janice Wald – MostlyBlogging.com

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One of the primary advantages of using WordPress is the vast developer community that supports the CMS with a constant stream of new plugins and templates, which makes it so easy to customize and streamline and improve your WordPress-run site, particularly from an SEO content marketing perspective. I’m a big fan of the old standbys like Yoast and WP Rocket, and each time Google dials up the importance of a ranking signal, like mobile responsiveness and page speed for instance, someone creates a new plugin to help make your content SEO friendly. So it’s that active development that really continues to help WordPress and the content published on WordPress platforms evolve and keep pace with Google’s ever-changing algorithms and best practices.

Ken Lyons – Measured SEM

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The WordPress team and community is working on a huge update for version 5 of WordPress, introducing a completely overhauled editor for posts and pages. It is supposed to simplify creating great-looking blog articles, without touching any code or working with complicated shortcodes.

I also see page builders like Beaver Builder or Thrive Architect evolve drastically. They make building landing pages, blog layouts, and any other layout quite straightforward – especially for people with no coding experience. While developers usually prefer to not work with page builders, they’re a great option for the majority of WordPress users.

Next year, we will see a lot more engagement in the WordPress community towards making WordPress more accessible to people. The community and companies are aware of the need to enhance the usability of their WordPress themes and plugins – and thus using WordPress will become easier than ever.

I hope that besides content creation, security will also become more of a focus for WordPress users. Since it is so widely used, it’s a very attractive target for automated scripts. Having an outdated version of WordPress, a theme, or a plugin is a security risk that – from my experience – gets ignored all too often.

Having automated updates and backups is essential for most sites that are not heavily customized, and luckily WordPress also has an indicator to measure password strength for user accounts. If WordPress users can get the fundamentals right and keep their site up-to-date, they’ll have a powerful and expandable platform for their content.

Jan Koch – WP Mastery

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It’s hard to see why WordPress would change standards much anymore. There are so many WP users that it seems much more likely that it’s some new CMS-system or another website platform that makes the industry take the next steps.

WordPress will still be a comparison point for any new system. So, if WP gets faster, other systems need to follow. If it offers some new feature, others will follow. But those changes will almost certainly be small, incremental steps. Any massive changes are much more likely to come from smaller players—not the behemoth of the industry.

Peter Sandeen – PeterSandeen.com

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In the coming years, WordPress will continue its dominance as the preferred CMS on the internet, thanks to ongoing focus on quality content creation.

It’s clear that WordPress is looking to make it easier to create high-quality content, with better writing tools, image tools, and multi-media capabilities to keep up with the visual-heavy consumption of modern web users.

Search engines have given us tools to allow them to better understand our content, and WordPress will place items like schema and other structured markups into the platform. This will allow Google and others to better serve up our content when it’s relevant to searchers.

Low quality doesn’t cut it anymore. If you want to be seen on the web, it has to be awesome and visually appealing. With each new release, WordPress makes it easier to create the great content people want to consume. The future looks great for those of us on the WordPress platform.

Ben Brausen – BenBrausen.com

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WordPress is still king when it comes to web development. With video and virtual reality becoming more and more popular, moving forward, I expect to see WordPress continue to add new themes and plugins that make it easy for businesses and brands to include these features in their websites. Already there are WordPress themes like Balzac and Inspiro that feature fully responsive video headers, which are great for showcasing video portfolios. There are also plugins like 360-degree Panoramic Viewer that allow you to present artwork and products with full 360-degree responsiveness for that virtual reality experience.

Today’s consumers are tech-savvy and expect more interactivity from their online experiences. At the same time, it is becoming more and more difficult to make your content stand out from the crowd. Video and VR are great ways to make your business website pop, and WordPress will continue to be at the forefront of this growing trend.

Brett Langlois – PureSEO.co.nz
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Year after year, WordPress sites are being enhanced according to page load speed, ease of use, design, mobile responsiveness, and functionality. Parallel to this, the standard for better websites is also raising its bar.

WordPress has been one of the easiest platform/CMS to learn by budding web designers and developers. This opens to a lot of doors for starters to develop unique, beautiful and more user-friendly websites and present content in a creative way through their custom web pages. I personally think this is where we are heading.

Fervil Von Tripoli – FervilVon.com

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I’m not a coder or developer so I can only talk about WordPress from a niche website publisher’s perspective. No doubt WordPress will continue to be the most popular CMS and website platform. However, I believe that more and more website publishers will look into and use alternative platforms for specific website features. I started doing this in 2016. I now use 4 cloud-based platforms that provide their own interface and provide very specific functionality on some of my sites. Examples include:

• Survey and polling software
• Question and Answer software
• Business directory software
• Landing page software

While I can use WordPress plugins to do all of the above, and I did test many plugins to achieve the various features, I found subscribing to third-party cloud platforms to be much easier and provides a better result. Plugins are great, but they are often not as good as dedicated third-party platforms that specialize in specific functionality. Were WordPress is so great is that all of the above integrates into my WordPress websites so I get the best of both worlds.

Jon Dykstra – FatStacksBlog.com

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With the launch of AMP Pages and Google continuous push towards adopting a mobile-first strategy, it would come as no surprise that in 2018 WordPress would likely focus more on developing themes and plugins that meet this criteria.

User experience is of utmost importance and as such, WordPress would also continue towards improving its performance ensuring that websites that are powered by WordPress enjoy superior speed and loading time.

Plus, as far as Content is concerned, with the rise of video marketing and virtual reality, WordPress will move on to providing easy-to-use plugins that will help website owners integrate videos and other animated elements seamlessly into their existing WordPress framework.

Nirav Dave – Capsicum Mediaworks

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I expect WordPress to continue its trailblazing lead in the way we create, publish and distribute contents in 2018. I expect to see close integration of the WordPress platform with video platform and technology, given that video is one of the most popular form of contents these days. WordPress developers are remarkable at responding to, and adapt to changing users demand. I think they will continue to lead in this area in 2018 and beyond.

Only recently I discovered Divi template and now most of my WordPress site are powered by this theme, for example Violins.info. As you may see the design is quite modern and what is the main important it is very easy to create different versions for desktop and mobile instead of using manual coding.

As you may see WP leads with a large margin. I want to see deeper integration with the most powerful other tools like email marketing, form builders etc.

Evgeniy Garkaviy – HopeSpring.org.uk

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I think that WordPress will continue to power the majority of websites across the world and make starting a WordPress blog even easier than ever. I see developers continuing to seek to improve the user experience, build on new and advanced design concepts, and yet continue to serve a very basic need, which is giving people a solid, secure, and easy to use platform for sharing ideas and building businesses.

I also believe that new features will continue to be added in the form of themes and plugins. Specifically, I see more access to multi-lingual website building and improved services and tools for aiding website owners with membership and eCommerce websites. Plus, I think that on a development level there will be an easier separation between the front and backends of websites for a more seamless site creation process, as well as new features being added to the native WordPress editor for a new improved content creation experience.

Lindsay Liedke – WPKube.com

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WordPress. WordPress is love. It is already shaping lives of hundred thousand of people around the world. Being a developer and marketer myself, WordPress is everything to me.

WordPress has already covered an extra mile in providing the best tools to developers and content marketers. Anyone can easily start their business online using WordPress. It reminds me about my first website back in 2007 when installing WordPress alone was a big task but now everything is changed. You can easily install WordPress and run your business with less than 10 plugins and within 10 minutes.

WordPress is no more just a CMS – it is turned into a beast that can do anything. People are using WordPress in more creative ways than ever.

Hamza Sheikh – TheDigitalNerds.com

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WordPress is probably the simplest way to publish content and make a good looking website, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon. I do think there needs to be more oversight when it comes to plugins and security, possibly a better review process for the plugin directory. I do think overall links from comments and pingbacks won’t be worth anything, since they’re largely spam.

Harris Schachter – OptimizePri.me

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WordPress has progressed to allow the end user to easily create and maintain their own site. With the plan of Gutenberg to be implemented into WordPress, this will make content creation a lot easier.

Additionally, plugin and theme developers have made it a lot easier to build websites. For example, plugins like Beaver Builder, and themes like Divi, have allowed basic WordPress users to build themes around their content. People can live edit and live design their website!

I’ve been using WordPress since it began, and it has come really far. I remember when you could only have posts, and the trend, back then, was to build php “skin” or theme, and put the blog area in an iframe. Of course, that’s ancient stuff, and technology has made it possible for WordPress websites to be responsive to most device widths, and even addresses accessibility. All of these things are just going to improve in the future.

Nile Flores – Blondish.net

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WordPress is eventually growing and with the Gutenberg update in beta content creation will include a fun ride it seems. The update will add a WYSIWYG editor which can make formatting better while giving you a preview of how that looks on the frontend, right when you are creating the content.

While this will be no match for the already popular visual builders like thrive architect, they still will give a bare minimum of the same experience to millions of users who wouldn’t want a visual builder yet.

Swadhin Agrawal – DigitalGYD.com

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WordPress is like the god-father is websites these days. A vast majority of websites are built on WordPress, whether it’s personal blogs or major magazine. 100% of my websites are built it with too. Do a simple search, and you’ll find over 20% of website on the internet is built on WordPress.

I don’t think there will be many changes in 2018, I would say it’s safe to say it will increase further. Expect more companies to build their site with it and expect more e-commerce store to build their store with it as well. It’s just too easy and most importantly affordable! No longer will companies need to pay so much and wait several weeks for their website to be completed. Today it takes less than 5 minutes for a basic site to be up and a week for a decent site to be up.

You can, however, expect more themes and plugins to take your WordPress website even further. That’s guaranteed.

Aaron Lee – Short of Height

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Considering that WordPress powers something like 20% of the top websites and owns about 50% of the CMS market share, WP is clearly here to stay. A few years back, they changed their WordPress.com backend with a brand new UI and introduction of REST API.

With all the built-in core WordPress features, such as image manipulation and user registration, the REST API becomes very powerful. New sites can now be created using other frameworks, such as Vue or React and hook into the API to create dynamic and asynchronous content. PHP is no longer required to run a site with a WP backend.

As for content, I know WordPress looking to roll out the Gutenberg Editor, which will change the way content is created and edited. It will introduce more power features to manipulate blocks of content. It will be exciting to see the updates to WordPress in 2018 and beyond!

Dario Zadro – ZadroWeb.com

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Web design tools, such as WordPress, have given people equal opportunity to share their thoughts, advice, and promotions with the world. Entrepreneurs aren’t forced to spend a fortune on ads to spread their message anymore; the DIY-nature of WordPress makes it accessible to anyone, and the SEO-friendly features make it possible to rank your site in search engines even if you aren’t an SEO whiz.

Because of this increasingly equal footing, more and more individuals will be able to leave the traditional 9-5 workplace, start their own venture, and scale their business. And with these new businesses comes more opportunity for collaboration. Guest blogging, interviews, expert roundups, and other collaborative content will become more popular in 2018 and beyond, allowing entrepreneurs to help each other grow and produce higher quality content for their audiences – a win-win.

Mandy McEwen – Mod Girl Marketing

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Ever since the start of WordPress, the way webmasters handled their site’s content was revolutionized for the better through this Content Management System platform for websites. Although WordPress started out as a blogging platform, it has become the world’s leading CMS.

Some of the reasons why WordPress became the leading CMS for webmasters are:

• It’s Free
• It’s Easy to Use
• It’s Versatile because of it’s theme and plugin offerings
• It’s Search Engine Friendly
• It’s Safe and Secure

I can see WordPress steadily developing in the years to come through the number of volunteers that make it a point to manage, fix, and develop the already outstanding performance WordPress offers to its users. So, when 2018 comes, WordPress will be bigger than it is now. With the steady releases of themes and plugins, there’s no stopping the CMS giant that is WordPress.

Additionally, with the points I just mentioned, I can also see WordPress increasing the number of its massive user index. It is true that their user index is already massive today, but who’s to say that it won’t become bigger in the following year? We can immediately think about how so many influential websites, people, and brands use WordPress as their primary CMS. So, it’s actually only a matter of time before other webmasters, bloggers, and brands switch to WordPress as their CMS. Don’t you agree?

Sean Si – SEO Hacker

The post WordPress in 2019: 61 Expert Tips on Where WordPress is Headed appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

As creative as it is to be a designer or marketer for a brand, whether it’s yours or someone else’s, it’s important to also be organized. By creating a systemized order of things that is easy to manage and maintain, you can cut out a lot of the confusion and chaos when you are creating a design or planning a design logo for yourself or a client.

21 Point Checklist

We have created a 21-point checklist that you can use as a great resource when you are planning a design or marketing project. Some tips apply to design only or marketing only while others apply to both.

1. Study your target audience and run experiments.– If you are going to create the best logo or graphic design for your brand (or our client’s brand), you need to get to know your target audience. You can do this in a number of ways such as studying your customer service emails, doing split A/B testing or experiments on your target audience, and other lean UX that will help you know who they are.

2. Think about the functionality of your design.– One of the most important things to consider when planning your design is to consider the purpose and functionality. Think about how and where your logo will be used and plan it so that it will be compatible with all channels and contexts where you will use it.

3. Make a list of the social media networks where the design will reside.– If you are going to create graphics that will work on social media, it’s important to know what type of specifications are required for each one. Facebook has very different specifications and requirements for logos and graphics than Twitter does, for example. Pinterest and Instagram, though they are both photo-based services, require various measurements for the photos for them to look right on the platform. Study the requirements before creating the graphics and logos so that you won’t waste time having to do it over.

4. Check for uniqueness– As you start creating the design, you should ask yourself if the logo or graphic is unique. If it is not, what can you do to improve on the graphic? If you got the graphic from an online service, be sure it is not copyrighted or you may not be able to use it in a commercial setting.

5. Consider the evergreen status– If a logo is “evergreen,” it means that it will last beyond the circumstances of the present day. Your business logo should be able to be used in a variety of contexts and to work for your business for a long time. You don’t want to have to make too many changes too often.

6. Line up your resources and tools– In order to create a strong and lasting logo, you need to have the tools to create it. Consider and shop around for the best design software before starting on your design. Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw are two you may want to consider.

7. Create video ads using the graphic– Videos are a great way to create your marketing ad. Think about how to include your logo or graphics within the video ad. Make a list of ways you will use the graphic within the video ads. Then create a motion graphics video with the graphic as part of the ad.

8. Make a list of freelance designers that you can outsource to.– When creating a logo, you may want to make a list of potential freelancers that can help you to design your logos or your clients’ logos if you decide to take it on yourself.

9. Create a marketing budget for your ad strategy.– It’s important not to overextend when it comes to budgeting for your marketing and design. Plan your digital design project carefully and allow for more time and expense than you think it could take. You never know what kinds of issues you could run into once you get into it.

10. Create three versions of your logo.– By creating at least three versions of your logo, you can look at each one and decide which one is best.

11. Consider colors and fonts carefully.– One of the most important aspects of a logo is the color and fonts that you choose. Think about and compare different colors that will influence the overall impact of your choices.

12. Look at other logos to get ideas.– If you look at what others have done with their logo, you can make a more informed decision for your own logo.

13. Check out design portfolios.– By looking over the design portfolios of various designers and marketers, you can see what professional designers or marketers can do for you.

14. Make sure it is versatile.– Versatility is important for your logo if you plan to market it on multiple channels and platforms.

15. Ask for revisions if hiring a professional design team.– Most design firms will allow you to ask for multiple revisions in order to get the result you need.

16. Ask for input from the target audience.– Do a short experiment that will give you input from your target audience so that you can create a design that they are more likely to respond to and like.

17. Ask for previews along the way.– By knowing how the progress is going along the way, you will be able to judge whether you are getting the results you want.

18. Create an automated social media posting schedule for your logo and ads.– We all know social media can be one of the biggest time wasters on the internet. The same holds true for online businesses and brands as well. Save time and get more done by automating your social media updates, outreach, and scheduling.

19. Use creative design software to fine-tune your design.– While everyone might feel like they are a designer, it’s really the design tools we all use that make us experts. When attempting to create a website or logo design, be sure to play around with a wide range of design tools and software. Some of the best tools on the internet are free or come with a free trial.

20. Bookmark digital marketing sites for later reference.– When is the last time you came across a really great online resource or tutorial that provided you with value? It probably happens quite often, but many times we will forget when or where it was. Build up a solid collection of online tools and resources by starting a new bookmarking list within your browser. This wil definitely come in handy later on.

21. Check out a professional design team like logodesignteam.com.– When all else fails, or if you simply would like to outsource the process to a professional design time, consider you options with Logo Design Team. With thousands of designs already created, there is no doubt you will be happy with the final result.

Work with the Best. Work with Web Design Team.

At Web Design Team, we understand that there are many things to remember when designing, organizing, and creating your online website, brand or graphic assets. We have been creating professional logos and site designs for businesses for well over a decade to help online business owners to promote their business and brands.

Check out our online portfolio and then contact us for a free quote. We will give you as many revisions as you need and stay in touch with you as we progress so that you will know what the final result will be.

Don’t forget to use our checklist if you plan to do it yourself or contact us and we’ll help you get it done! Either way, make sure you focus on quality. Your online logo, brand, and identity may be with you for a very long time!

The post 21 Point Checklist for Every Designer and Marketer to Follow appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

We found some great web designs from some of the top brands that you may like to see. Look at these models and think about what makes them work for that name.

TechCrunch

TechCrunch is a well-known British online publication that focuses on the world of technology. The look says, “Tech” and the logo works nicely with the brand, as well. Their site was built on WordPress, which is a good platform for online publications and it works nicely for this brand. The colors are predominantly white and green.

The Official Star Wars Blog

Another great website that was put up by the “Star Wars” people can be seen here. It is also a WordPress site. What makes it so great is the excellent use of their logo at the top of the page and the black color that is typical of the Star Wars movie background and other assets. They feature their blog on this site as well, and their navigation menu is extensive with many different links to different sites that allow you to buy merchandise, games, and apps.

Investopedia.com

Investopedia has created a name for themselves by being one of the most credible sources for business and investment news. They focus on financial news, as well and even offer some high content articles on insurance and business that helps people make more informed decisions. Their website seems to fit their brand nicely and has the format of a newspaper publication, which is appropriate for this type of business.

Apple.com-Pretend the Universe

The Apple.com site has always been a nice, clean-cut site that emulates the beauty and simplicity of the Apple and iOS products. But right now in 2017, they have a minimalist look that seems to top all of their previous versions of their website. The site opens with the traditional white background, and all you see is the beautiful, sleek, new iOS X (new edition iPhone). But even more enticing than this is the text that is seen on the phone, “Say hello to the future.” It reminds us a bit of the famous line that Steve Jobs said to his new board when he returned to Apple and reclaimed his company. One board member said, “So what are we going to do now?” He replied, “We’re going to pretend the universe.” This site design seems to suggest that same invincible spirit of Steve Jobs and the company he created that suggests that anything is possible.

McDonald’s

McDonald’s site makes you hungry. There are so many closeup images of their food and goodies that it’s hard to ignore. Right now, they have their main background with burgers and fries, but they have created the site in such a way that another moving panel comes to the forefront with their Peppermint Mocha, being front and center. Why do they do this? Obviously, because it is one of their “hottest” items during the cold winter and holiday season and they are gearing up for it. The photography of their food and drink items is superior, and this adds to the attractiveness of this site. They have also added to the look of the site by adding a four-panel graphic with clickable links to join their email list, get in a soft drink deal, explore their nutrition facts, and look at deals in their mobile app. With so many choices to choose from, McDonald’s has the corner on the market in fast food with this engaging site.

Target.com

The Target site is an attractive and interactive site that rotates their new items around to place it in front of their visitors, while also offering many specials as well. Their navigation is divided into categories that are listed at the bottom of the website so that shoppers can follow the type of search they want quickly and easily. This site adds to the customer journey and keeps things simple for the customer. It is easy to use with plenty of options.

Rolex.com: The Luxury on your wrist

For those who have ever dreamed of having the world’s most expensive watch, here is a site you should look at. It’s the official Rolex site, and they feature movie clips that show actors wearing Rolexes as well as several rolls of attractive Rolexes with a scrolling navigation. The site is a minimalist site that is simple but beautiful and appeals to the man who wants to wear the “best watch in the world.” Rolex is a status symbol, whether it is truly the best watch in the world or not and they have been able to use their website to communicate this through their web property.

What makes these websites so great?

Well, there are seven of the best sites out there in 2019, in our opinion. We could have included many others, but these stood out to us due to their original look and how they seemed to fit perfectly with the brand that they represent. They all have some things in common such as ease of navigation, beautiful photography and backgrounds, graphics, and so forth. But the content is also important. Even with the minimalist style sites, the information and links that are available for visitors increase the level of engagement and interaction while providing users with the best options.

What about your own website?

If you are ready to create your website, you may want to take a few notes on the components of these sites to see what works best. Having attractive graphics, unique scrolling or designs, and even custom navigation can all add to the value and the customer experience.

How you create your site should be unique to your brand, and it should focus on bringing out the most critical aspects of your brand without sacrificing quality. Whether you are an online publication, eCommerce business owner, or other, you want your web design to symbolize your brand in the best way possible.

If you don’t know where to start, check out our online portfolio and then sign up for a free consultation. We are here to help you grow your brand and create the perfect site that will attract the types of people that you want as customers.

Knowing your audience is a big part of creating your perfect website. We can help. Bring us your information and talk to us about a custom-designed website from webdesignteam.com. We can incorporate your site into WordPress or any other type of format or platform that you want to use. Our cutting-edge technology and programming tools can help your website rocket your brand to the top in the new year.

The post 7 of the Best Web Designs from Top Brands in 2019 appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

With more than a billion active websites on the internet today, this just means you are going to have a billion more websites you need to compete against. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the practice of not only improving your site to make sure it’s SEO friendly, but also to gain the necessary backlinks and social shares to help it rank in the search results.

For a website to rank at the top of Google for any specific term or keyword, it not only needs to provide a lot of value to an audience it also needs to have quality backlinks and references as well. This is just one of the many reasons why it’s very tough to rank in the search results for any generic keyword or terms. Nearly all of the websites that are already ranked for such terms will have thousands of backlinks to their website, while also being established in age and have several prominent articles and site partners on the internet. All of this is important, as it makes the ranking decision process much easier for Google to determine, by trusting the quality of such a site, the value they serve to an audience and how other authority sites link back to them.

With all of this in mind, there are still plenty of ways you can get your site to rank higher, even if it’s new. Today we are going to be looking at five of the most effective ways to rank a website higher in the search results.

1 – Write Longer and Better Content

No matter what type of website or online business you are have, if you want to rank in the search results you need to have high quality content that not only provides value but is also better than what is currently available from your competition. At the same time, it’s also important to understand that it’s much more valuable to have a very long article with thousands of words of content, versus coming out with a bunch of smaller articles with just a few hundreds of words of content. The best way to look at this is to think about how much more extra work you would have to do to promote each of these individual articles, versus just promoting one big article.

Before even writing any content for your website be sure to look at your competition and see who is currently ranking for keywords and searched terms you would also like to for. Look at the content they are creating and then think about how you can create it even better. Also explore new options for including visual content, images and online video.

2 – Use WordPress or WordPress SEO Plugins

In addition to the content that you create for your site, it’s also important to understand the best On-Site SEO methods. By using a free WordPress tool like Yoast SEO, you can create custom titles and descriptions for each article you go live with on your site. At the same time, WordPress can make it easy for you to create permalinks that are search engine friendly and utilize the same keywords within your article in the URL of your site.

If you don’t have any experience with building a website of your own, and still aren’t sure on how to best create content that can rank in Google, we highly recommend you use the WordPress platform. Not only does it offer amazing SEO tools like Yoast SEO, it also has thousands of custom and premium WordPress themes and plugins that can help you with this process as well. The benefit here is that you basically don’t need to have any technical or design skills to create a successful site that can rank in the search results.

3 – Create a Unique Infographic to Be Shared By Others

In order to get more social shares in back link to your site, you need to be continually thinking about new ways to create original content that others find value in. With more audience is now focused on visual content and using social media, infographics are one of the best ways to accomplish this.

If you are already creating content for your website or blog, you can easily turn this into an infographic by using online software like Canva or hiring an outside design agency. Once you have an infographic created, you can then go live with it on your site and start promoting it through social media. At the same time, you can also add an embed form on your site which will allow other sites to use your infographic and sure to their audience. This works extremely well, as you are providing it easily to other site honors, and you will also in the process.

You can also post your visual content and infographics to high traffic websites like slideshare.net or even submit them to infographic directories. While the design and creation process of an infographic is important, the infographic marketing process is even more crucial.

4 – Guest Blogging and Contributing Content to Other Sites

When it comes to SEO in ranking in the search results, it’s all about getting quality backlinks from well-known and authority sites. There are basically only a few ways to accomplish this — which are to create original content that others find value in and simply link back to it as a resource (which isn’t often), paying for advertising or text content placement (which Google doesn’t approve of), or through the use of guest blogging and providing original contents other websites for free in exchange for a credit and often times a link back to your site.

The concept of guest blogging works extremely well and it’s simply one of the best ways to not only create backlinks to your site, it’s also perfect for showing off your expertise and putting you in front of a new audience. Since many websites and blogs are always looking for more content to also help them rank within the surf results, they will often have guest blogging opportunities on their website or blog.

To find some other time guest blogging opportunities today, all you need to do is visit Google and search for whatever type of industry or market you are in and then also include the words”write for us”. This will provide you with thousands of websites that are looking for guest writers.

Whenever writing for another website, always be sure to provide the most value possible and to always use your real name, profile picture, and link back to your website. Don’t forget, this isn’t just a method for building backlinks it’s also great for growing your brand and expertise in the process.

5 – Expert Roundups are Great for Brand Building and Backlinks

Have you ever taken a look at other authority figures, businesses, and brands within your niche and wanted to get them featured on your own site? If so, this is quite possible through the use of an expert roundup. In addition to getting amazing original content created for your site, expert roundups are also great for social shares and increasing links back to your site.

The way an expert roundup works is simple. The first thing you need to do is come up with a question to ask experts within your niche. Also make sure that this question is something that your audience is interested in, while also providing them with a solution in the process. After you come up with this question it’s then time to reach out to a bunch of industry experts that you would like to feature on your site. This is often done through email outreach for completing a form on their website. You can see a live example of an expert roundup in this whiteboard video resource roundup.

Once you’ve received enough responses from different experts within your industry or niche, you should then compile all of their information into one large expert roundup. After the article goes live on your site, you should focus on heavily promoting it, while also letting each of the experts know that they’ve been featured on your site. More often than not, they will not only share the content on social media, but they might also link back to it from their website as well.

How to Rank Your Website Above the Competition

After reading through each of the actionable methods above, you should now have a much better idea on how to improve your chances to rank higher in the search results. It’s not just about using the right content and creating value for your audience, it’s also about promoting it and making sure you are building a trustworthy brand in the process.

The game of SEO is one that takes a lot of time and patience. However, even small players and new websites can compete against some of the largest brands and websites in the world when they focus on creating original content and going after long tail keywords. Even with there being over a billion active websites on the internet today, and Google listing only ten organic links on each search ranking, it’s still a level playing field for those who are willing to put in the time and effort.

If you would like to learn more about the process of SEO and how to create a website that has the potential to rank higher in the search results, be sure to contact Web Design Team. Not only have we helped thousands of individuals, organizations, and brands create original content and help grow their business, we’ve also used the same methods to grow our business to what it is today as well.

The post 5 Ways to Drastically Improve Your Website’s Search Rankings appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

You will need to also consider the following aspects of your website construction:

• UI (user interface)
• UX (user experience)
• Mobile-friendliness
• Shareability factors
• Social media integration

Why are these factors important?

All of these factors should be considered when you are considering building your website. You need your site to have a positive user interface and provide a positive user experience for your users. You need to provide a mobile-friendly interface that allows users to access your content on their mobile phones. You’ll also want to create a website that is shareable on social media. If you have the tools, skills, and time to devote to making your site work the way it should, you may want to consider doing it yourself. However, you should think about the advantages and disadvantages of designing your site before you proceed.

PROS of Creating your own Website

• Gives you complete artistic freedom– When you create your own website, you’ll be able to design it like you want, without restrictions. You can write raw code if you have the platform that will allow the import of a raw HTML file and you won’t be limited to the backend technology of a web server, in general.
• Allows you to make changes faster– If you design your website, you will be able to go in and make changes faster than if you have it designed by someone else.
• Doesn’t tie you down to a template– Most online web design platforms have specific templates that you choose to design your site. You can use these templates, even if you create your website on your own, but you’ll be limited to the template unless you do your site from scratch. If you do decide to create your website within one of these templates, you’ll still be able to control much of your site’s changes and design. You will just have to work within the template to some degree. Many of these predesigned templates allow you to insert HTML boxes where you can insert your code.
• Lets you decide which aspects to include– When you are in charge of your design, you get to decide which aspects and graphics to include, whether you want to include video, infographics, and other aspects, and the overall look of your site.
• May save money on design costs– If you have the time to design your site yourself, it will likely save you quite a bit of money on design costs. Since you are not hiring others to create it for you, you save the cost of design charges that web design firms charge you for this highly technical work.

CONS of Creating your own Website

• May require knowing raw code or using an alternative program to design– Sometimes you may find that your web server platform does not offer all of the tools or options that you need to control what your website does. In these cases, you may need to use an alternative program that lets you design what you want with an outside design tool. This can be tricky because not all third-party software will be compatible with your web server. You may need to contact support for your web server to find out if the software will work on your page.
• May require debugging of code from time to time– If you are designing your site with raw code, you may need it to be debugged from time to time. This is because the raw code is prone to problems and tends to have some issues that need to be occasionally fixed. This is one of the problems in designing your site with raw code. You need to be an expert in both coding and debugging so that you can handle any programming problems that you encounter.
• It may lack the structure of a predesigned template– When you try to code your website on your own, you may not be able to produce the polished look of a predesigned website template.
• May look less professional– Designing your own site may result in a less professional look than those created on a formatted template. A lot of thought in design is put into the online web templates so you may want to consider using these to avoid having problems in how your site displays if you do it yourself in raw code.
• May not be user-friendly or mobile-friendly without optimization– Another disadvantage in designing your own site is that it may not result in a user-friendly website. This is very important especially with the increase of mobile users where Google has emphasized having an optimized and mobile-friendly page.

So, you have a choice. You can do it yourself using the raw code and deal with the technical aspects that this avenue may cause, or you can create a website on your own within an online template. The latter may be the better choice if you want to do it yourself, but you are limited in your coding skills or debugging options.

The goal of creating a website is to produce a site that results in a higher degree of engagement and conversions. It doesn’t matter how you get there as long as you succeed in creating a positive user experience that will result in higher ROI for your brand.

If you want to try this on your own, give it a go! You’ll never know what you can do until you try. But if you’ve tried this method and want some professional advice or assistance with your web design, we’re the ones to call.

We are webdesignteam.com, and web design is what we do. Contact us and fill out our free form online to find out more and get a free quote. We’ll be happy to talk to you about your web design needs and create a plan of action to help you create a website you’ll be proud of.

Visit us at webdesignteam.com to learn more.

The post The Pros and Cons of Building Your Own Website appeared first on Web Design Blog - Web Design Team.

10 Web Design Tips from the Experts

You need to keep your rankings in Google high, and that requires following their standards such as readability and mobile responsiveness. Check out these ten tips from expert web designers to figure out how to optimize your web design for the best results.

1. CodeKit for Web Developers– For Mac developers and web designers, Keir Whitaker recommends using CodeKit. It’s a browser reloading feature that allows you to reload your pages quickly to see your changes. Keith is the co-founder of Viewport Industries and an accomplished web developer.

2. Apply Global Changes– Web Developer, Elliott Fienberg suggests using the wildcard CSS rule to speed things up in the early stages of your design. Use an asterisk as the selector to globally apply changes to a specific parameter such as changing all of the fonts on a page. An example of how it might look is: {font-family:arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}. Putting the asterisk at the beginning of this line of code will change the font on the entire page. Consider this a shortcut method to changing fonts or other assets on your page.

3. Set Garish Outlines– Chris Murphy of Web Standardistas shares a tip about cross-platform design. He says to set outlines in a garish color so that it will work on other platforms. This is a coding tip. He says that using a code line such as {outline:10px solid green/red/yellow/blue;} allows you to see which standards you are applying before making it final.

4. Check your character count– Consider how many characters you are using and stick to 45-75 characters per line for comfortable reading. Trent Walton, founder, and designer of Paravel, recommends this standard as a way to ensure your design remains responsive.

5. Use FitVids for video embedding– Embedding video has become easier due to the ease of use of HTML5 coding. But responsively sizing video for mobile users and some platforms is a problem for web designers and developers. A jQuery plugin that supports Flash when using HTML5 may help, according to some experts in web design.

6. Smushit for Image Size Reduction– The key to a responsive website is to make sure it is optimized. This includes optimization of images for best quality while limiting the loading time to a minimum. Web developer and Microsoft brand advocate, Martin Beeby says that SmushIt is a great option that allows you to reduce the image size.

7. Export images as an 8-bit PNG– Martin Beeby also offers a tip about exporting images with PNG image files. When exporting from Photoshop to PNG format, export it as an 8-bit PNG file. This will create a high-quality image that won’t affect the original image.

8. Increase font sizes– Increasing your font size can help improve your readability and engagement with your readers. Don’t overdo the fonts on your entire page, but consider using an 18-point font where you want to create the most focus on your written content.

9. Use Typecast with Google Fonts– There is a new public version of Typecast that you can access through Google Fonts. It allows you to select any font from Google Fonts website and follow the link to the Typecast app.

It also allows you to work with fonts of any size and a wide range of control to build readable type systems on your site. It also lets you control parameters such as size, weight, and line spacing. Then you can export it as H TML, PNG files, or CSS to share with others.

10. Use a 12-column grid– Rhys Little, a well-known web developer for several different companies and applications, recommends using a grid with columns that are divisible by 2, 3, and 4. A 12-column grid is a popular grid that is both web design-friendly and user-friendly.

How to Apply Web Design Tips to your Page

Many of these web design tips involve the use of code that you have to implement on your site using either HTML, CSS, or other means. If you are not comfortable with inserting code, you can check out other web design tips at Elegantthemes.com or the Web Design Team blog.

Not every change you make to your website has to be a coding change. Many online web design platforms allow you to quickly move graphics, text, and other elements around through a drag-and-drop procedure.

Choosing the right web design platform is an important part of this procedure. You should check out the features of your web host and design platform before joining. Some web servers allow easy editing within the platform while others require you to upload files that you have created offline.

How to Choose a Web Design Firm

If you decide you don’t want to bother with learning to code or how to insert HTML lines within your web code, there is another option. Just look around for a professional web design team that can do it all for you.

At webdesignteam.com, we have the skills to help you improve your website based on years of experience. We can apply our knowledge of engineering, coding, and creative web techniques to bring you the best results possible. Our server is efficient and reliable, and you can make changes anytime with our help.

Contact us to get a free estimate, and we’ll get back with you about your website. Let us put our skills to work for you. Mention any of the tips mentioned in our post, and we’ll be glad to discuss them with you.

Visit us today at webdesignteam.com.

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