Being a web designer or developer, you might be in a design block or might have some problems with code so you take a trip away from your machine and suddenly have a brainwave of solutions – This is where your iOS device will come in handy. Other than this, there are a multitude of apps that will make you more productive even when sat in front of your machine. I’ve not listed every app under the sky but some of the more useful ones.

18 Vital iOS apps for Web Designers and Developers

Dropbox

iSpy Analytics

Some users may complain of the lack of advance features but this is perfect for the mobile. It’s free and developed by a reputable company so works quite well.

FTP On The Go

Access, edit and modify files!

WhatTheFont

Take a pic, upload, wait a few seconds and discover the font.

Wordpress

Needs no introduction

Remember the milk

Excellent (probably the best) to-do app and syncs with your online account.

Paypal

For all you freelancers out there.

Skype

Contact clients via the mobile

Source Viewer

Who doesn’t love the <p> tags?

Color Expert

Excellent tool for both designers and developers. in the middle of a colour block?

Evernote

MobileRSS

Excellent RSS Feed reader that syncs with your Google Reader account and it’s FREE!

Hootsuite

I prefer this over the office Twitter app as it allows multiple accounts and syncs with your online Hootsuite account! (it’s all about the sync these days)

iBillTo

Keep client payment/bill details on the go.

iBlueSky (mindmapping)

Like putting mind maps together?

Server Status

Monitor server downtime.

Photobucket

DatabaseViewer

Cheatsheets

There are many cheatsheet apps available that I though would list together here:

• PHP Cheat Sheet
• MySQL Cheat Sheet
• RegEX Cheat Sheet
• jQuery Cheat Sheet
• JavaScript Cheat Sheet
• CSS Cheat Sheet
• HTML Cheat Sheet

Conclusion

So there you have it. If you’re an iPhone/iPod/iPad user and a web designer/developer, you shouldn’t be without most of the apps above! Have I missed anything?

Ever wondered why other web designers are busy doing great business while you are stuck there waiting for customers to come your way? Days passed and you still have no customers. Do you feel being left out in the design realm? Oh well, it is not a good feeling for you to linger. But instead of sulking there, why do you not patch things up and make a difference. There are a lot of things to do and to improve. Just find the ways and give it your best shot.

Web design business is very competitive and individuals and firms have to adopt creative ways to get more clients. If you are a good web designer or design firm, some of the things you can do to increase the number of clients you get are listed below.

1. Word of Mouth

Yes, it is true that internet marketing will help you get more clients. However, studies have shown that word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools. People trust recommendations from friends and family members and will use your service if you served one of the people they know well. This is the magic of viral marketing. Before you know it, you are already a big hit in the industry. In addition, you can offer your clients an incentive to refer others to you!

2. Service Excellence

Your customers will love you if you provide excellent service. One of the best ways of doing this is to over deliver on your promises. Instead of simply creating a mundane website, use compelling colors and good web copy that will wow your clients!

3. Customer Support Excellence

Customer service begins from the time a client contacts you to the final completion of his or her project. Be quick to respond to their queries, provide regular feedback on the progress of their projects and reduce the number of questions they may have by sending out an FAQ at the initial contact.

4. Use Social Networking

Social networking sites can help you get more web design customers. Keep an active presence on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and engage your followers, fans and connects respectively. Avoid direct selling. Instead, provide web design solutions to what people are asking and you will gain their respect. In turn, new projects will come your way.

5. Approach Local Organizations

If you are a member of local organizations or clubs in your area, let the members know what you do. Most small organizations do not have a budget to employ a fulltime web designer and opt to have their websites designed by outside firms.

6. Networking

Go out and meet people. While advertising can be effective, most people prefer to work with designers they have met and trust. You will also be surprised at the number of referrals that can come your way through networking.

7. Use Classifieds, Forums and Message Boards

Local classifieds sites are a great way to get people looking for web design services. Sign up at popular message boards and forums and post your services in the classifieds section. However, be careful not to spend too much time in these forums.

8. Offer Complimentary Services

You can offer other services that compliment your web design work. You can have a different department to work on graphics and copywriting, search engine optimization, provide web hosting packages like cheap dedicated hosting and others. This will make you a one stop shop web design firm and clients will not have to look for other companies to offer these complementary services.

9. Your Portfolio Should Speak for You

As you do more web design projects, your portfolio will diversify and this will help you get more clients. Upload the portfolio on your website or burn it on a CD that you can send to clients on your first contact. Your past work will act as proof on the quality of your work.

Conclusion

Getting more web design customers will depend on the marketing efforts, both online and offline, that you will implements. If you do a good job, you are bound to get more clients from referrals. You can also market yourself online using search engine optimization, social media marketing, pay per click and email marketing and others.

You can start with free domain hosting. Be sure that your provider is reliable so that customers can easily access your website any time of the day. From there, work up to achieve exponential growth in terms of web design work.

Do not sulk there. Do something. Some good things are meant to happen if you will work your way up. People who needs functional and creative web design are just out there…Try to reach out and be the best in what you do.

Starting a new website can be quite a hassle, but you can save time and efforts by using a website template. The point is that website templates are great alternatives to expensive and time-consuming custom websites. Moreover, there are a lot of website templates that are free to download and use.

Please scroll down and you’ll find 25 free website templates that any designer, webmaster and blogger would be proud to download. Each of these templates was created with a certain business in mind. Thus, you can find templates for real estate websites, travel blogs, entertaining websites, hosting websites, personal blogs, etc. So, all you have to do now is choose the design that fits your needs, replace the default texts and images with your own ones and your website is ready to go.

Although, the website templates listed below are offered for free, there is one requirement, however: you must keep the footer links intact. This way you’ll express your gratitude to those who create freebies.

25 Awesome Static Website Templates For Free

Conclusion

As you can see, free web templates are not necessary boring and we hope you’ll find them useful for your future projects.

If you need more freebies like this, please visit WebsiteTemplatesOnline.com and you’ll find over 1000 free website templates to choose from.

We all love Photoshop and many of you will use it for hours on a daily basis. The question is, have you ever been in a situation where Photoshop isn’t installed on a computer you are using?

Of course you have. This is why this post is important.

7 Great Online Alternatives to Photoshop

Pixlr

Looks and feels a lot like Photoshop

fotoflexer

Edit photos from many online sources (Flickr, Photobucket etc.)

SumoPaint

Looks Impressive (especially the real–time gradient)

Splashup

DrPic

Built in JavaScript

thumba

Drag ‘n Drop!

Image Editor

Bonus!

From start to finish, deviantART Muro allows users to create complete works of art in ways never before realized by digital drawing programs. deviantART Muro already boosts standard and interactive brushes, full-blown layer capabilities, and the ability to upload directly to your deviantART account, but we’ve also left room for expansion. You can expect to see many features and functions added in the coming weeks and months.

Muro

PHP and ASP are amongst the most widely used programming languages online and generally just knowing one will get you by all the way.

There are some people however, who would like to know both for various reasons I won’t bore you with but this list will eb a great starting point for anyone who wished to do so.

NOTE: By ASP, I mean ASP (VB), not ASP (C) or ASPX

Basic PHP/ASP Function Comparison

Conclusion

It’s always good to know the basic syntax of a variety of languages in your field just to get you by those odd task’s that appear once in a while.

Each and every person who owns a website will likely have some sort of Analytics script installed to monitor traffic. And it is probably Google Analytics.

Don’t get me wrong, Google Analytics is an Awesome packages and gives you tons of data about your visitors but just sometimes you need something different (or you don’t like Google and want to host your data elsewhere ).

Whatever your reason, you need look no further.

8 Worthy Alternatives to Google Analytics

Piwik (Free)

Piwik is my favourite alternative for 2 reasons –

1. Open Source
2. All the data sits on your DB
(3. and it’s real time)

Yahoo! Web Analytics (Free)

An enterprise level solution.
Real time data

Clicky (Free up to a limit of 3000 page views a month)

Clicky is designed to be the easiest web analytics service you’ve ever used. Services like Google Analytics do everything except take out the trash, but you probably don’t know what any of the data means. With Clicky, everything just makes sense.

Optimised for iPhone

Woopra

Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use,real-time Web tracking and analysis application. We deliver the richest library of visitor statistics in the industry through our innovative desktop application. But Woopra is more than simply statistics

Includes a Desktop Application

Mint (Low-Cost)

Mint helps you identify where the most interest is being generated and over what.

Chartbeat

Used by some big players.

Stuffed Tracker

Reinvigorate

Realtime
Heat map Technology
Desctop App

Conclusion

I would personally still stick with Google Analytics however would also give Piwik a try as I’m sure the Piwik community have developed some great extensions to it!

Over the last 2 month, I’ve built a few Magento sites during which I’ve had certain requests to add some basic extras to the site template – basic it may sound however if you have even a little experience with Magento, you’ll be aware of its complexity.

Product Reviews and Review form in a tab

1. Add the following:

2. Add

to app/design/frontend/[your_theme]/template/review/product/list.phtml

Note: For the above to work, your theme should already be using product tabs (Many tutorials are available online if you don’t have tabs)

Source: http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/31712/

Show Sub-Categories (as images with text) on Category or product Pages (and sort by name)

If a category contains both products and further sub-categories, then this code can be used so such a category shows both products and sub-categories.

Add the following:

to app/design/frontend/[your_theme]/template/catalog/category/list.phtml

OR app/design/frontend/[your_theme]/template/catalog/product/list.phtml

Display RSS Feed items

Step 1

Create a file called latest_news.phtml in app/design/frontend/default/[your_theme]/template/callouts/latest_news.phtml with the following:

Step 2

Add the following:

to app/design/frontend/[your_theme]/layout/page.xml

Note: The above will add the code to the right sidebar – you can reference it elsewhere on the site

Display a product’s “quantity in stock” on your Product Pages

<?php echo $stock_count ?>

Flush/force DNS (Windows only)

Many a time, when you change the DNS records and nameservers of a domain to point to the new site, it can take up to 72 hours to propagate over the internet. Unfortunately sometimes, the client/customer/general users may see the new site before the developer and if there are any issues then the developer won’t be able to fix them until they can see the new site. Previously i used to wait like anybody else however recently a colleague showed me a method by which I can force my browser to  view the new site!

Step 1:

Open command promt (search/run “CMD” in windows)

In Command promt, type the following:

“ipconfig /flushdns”

Step 2

Go to the folder:

%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\

For windows 7, %SystemRoot% is C:\Windows\

For windows XP, it may be a little different.

Inside the folder “etc” is a file named – “hosts”. Open this with Notepad and add the line

xx.xxx.xxx.xx www.YOUR-DOMAIN.co.uk

At the bottom of the file (where xx.xxx.xxx.xx is the ip address of the new host)

Then you will have to clear your browser cache.

Ecommerce tracking in Magento Using Google Analytics

This one is simple.

Go to System > Configuration > Google API and insert you analytics ID.

Then

• login to Google analytics
• Select the account for your site
• Click edit
• on “Main Website Profile Information”, click edit
• tick the radio button “Yes, an E-Commerce site”

Site search tracking in Magento Using Google Analytics

• login to Google analytics
• Select the account for your site
• Click edit
• on “Main Website Profile Information”, click edit
• tick the radio button “Do Track Site Search”
• insert the letter “q” in the input box

Display PHTML files in Dreamweaver

http://www.dreamweaverclub.com/dreamweaver-phtml-inc.php

Conclusion

Is there anything else you would like to do with Magento? leave a note below and I’ll see what i can do!

Nowadays, websites have become so critical to the success of practically any company.

A good website in many cases can spell the difference between a viable business enterprise and a failed disaster. It is true that a poorly laid out website can actually drive the firm or sole proprietor’s potential customers away.

With so many competitors only a mouse click away, the website in question needs to be both attractive, easy to use, and cutting edge all at once.

Ensure that the Price List is Easily Available

Customers can not purchase a company’s products or services if they are not easily able to figure out what they cost. A business or individual ought to go out of their way to ensure that it is simple for any visitors to the site to reference and understand their price list.

There are websites which actually try to conceal their price lists for their various goods. They will not give a price until a customer selects the order or buy button. Sometimes, they even make the potential customer wait until an account has been set up on the site to divulge this critical information.

Whatever the logic behind these types of actions truly is, they only harm the prospects of the seller in the end. If the visitor is only window shopping and wants to write down the price for possibly coming back to purchase it later, be sure that he or she will not hunt around the website for a long time looking for it. Rather, he or she will just go to another e-commerce website instead, one where the seller is upfront with his or her pricing information.

Remember that numerous Internet experts have claimed that the typical Internet surfer possesses the same attention span as a flea does.

Offer Both Descriptions and Pictures for All Products and Services

There has been a raging debate on this topic where company websites are concerned. On the one hand, web designers are told to keep it brief, as they will only get a few minutes, or seconds even, to impress the surfer enough that he or she stays on the website.

On the other, experts recommend that products be well described, and have pictures as well, in order to thoroughly impress a potential client. There is a happy medium ground which will meet both objectives.

Amazon proves to be an effective example of the way that this can be properly and effectively accomplished. They put up a short description, a small thumbnail type of picture, the cost of the item, and a link to see more information on the item, as well as to purchase it.

The point is that Amazon does have a full product description page for all items somewhere on the website. This sort of description and picture process is critical for a successful website. In particular, if the product being considered has many competitors offering it, or proves to be fairly expensive, then this becomes even more important.

Put simply, these product descriptions and pictures are like salesmen pushing a certain product to a walk in customer. On the top of this description page, as well as at the bottom, the vendor should have an Order Now or Buy button.

The key is to make it as simple as possible for the potential customers to complete the sale once they are convinced.

Make It Simple for Customers to Browse the Website However They Would Prefer

There are all too many websites which lock the visitor into a pre-arranged sales pitch. First, the user is forced to read the authoring company or individual’s introduction on the product itself. Once the tiring tome is completely read, a link to the next page magically appears at the bottom of this particular web page.

The message on the second page must be endured before the user is allowed to move forward, once again. Although the individual might have already chosen to purchase the product, he or she is simply not allowed to skip all of the propaganda to get to the checkout page. This is too much like a high pressure salesman tactic, and it certainly leaves a negative impression on any visitor.

Simple to Use and Intuitive Navigation

If the navigation of a website is not simple and straightforward for the visitor to figure out, then the website usability factor is particularly low. This will likely discourage anyone who might simply wish to buy an item on impulse.

A golden rule to run a company or sole proprietor website by is that the customer must not ever be made to click his or her way through numerous pages before he or she is permitted to get to the download or buy now buttons. This is the fastest way to drive away a good portion of the visitors who came to the website looking to purchase a good or service in the first place.

Keeping the Website Simple, Staying Away From Flash, and Appropriate Use of Colours

Complex websites do nothing to help a business’ cause with Internet surfers. When they are not able to quickly and easily find the features and products that they are seeking, they are likely to simply go to a competitor’s site which is easier to understand. Staying away from the use of flash is a related point.

Since everyone is using a different specification of computer and Internet connection speed, the business should avoid flashy websites which look good in theory, but in practice, may keep a potential customer from being able to quickly access the website, or even require that he or she downloads missing plug ins along the way.

A last point to consider concerns the colours used on a website. One thing that ought to be remembered for certain involves avoiding colours which clash. Do not use a dark colour on a black background, for example. This could make it hard for some users to distinguish the text from the background. Once again, anything that makes it more difficult for the user is likely to cause them to disengage and leave the site.

Conclusion

The best thing that a business’ website can possibly do is to make the majority of important links easily available from literally each and every page of their website.

In simply putting them up on the navigation bar, this is most easily achieved. Businesses must never forget that truly great customer service over the Internet begins with an simple to use website. And having a readily available and reliable business website starts with finding a trusted e-commerce hosting provider.

How the business or sole proprietor designs and maintains their website will certainly determine if a given visitor will turn into a buying customer, or go on to become the customer of a competitor, instead.

More and more people are realising the importance of Web Usability and the benefits it can bring. A quick search on Google will yield thousands of examples.

My aim for this article is not to explain usability in detail or explain it’s need and importance, rather I’m going to present some very interesting statistics of how users use a website depending on various factors.

All the stats should be self-explanatory…

*These statistics have been gathered from various sources outlined below.

Success Rates and Experience

Average Time Spent on the homepage

You only have minimum time to get the message across otherwise you will lose your visitor. Apple probably do it the best:

Page Views by the Screenful

Homepage vs. Interior Pages

Scrolling by Page Type

Most Hated Advertising Techniques

Browser Statistics (March 2002-2010)

All web developers will be glad to see IE6 on the decrease however approx 9% of users still use IE6 so if your an online business, it’s vital to have your website working with IE6.

JavaScript Statistics (January 2000-2008)

Display Resolution (January 2000-2010)

Colour Depth

Sources:

• Book: Prioritizing Web Usability
• Web: W3Schools

There’s now over a billion people online around the world, and 78% of that one billion do not speak English as a first language (Internetworldstats.com), so if you’re launching a website that’s just going to be in English, it’s worth taking into account that you’re only going to be reaching out to 22% of your potential audience.

This is especially relevant if your website is in the business of selling, because research has shown that 85% of consumers won’t buy a product from a website if they can’t access information in their own language (Common Sense Advisory, 2006). So if you’re planning to branch out with localised multilingual sites, it’s worth taking a few factors into account before you get started.

Every cultural group has its own particular cultural quirks, its own particular consumer behaviour and its own aesthetic sensibility, and this has been proven to relay into website design and e-commerce. Psychology professors Denise Park of the University of Illinois and Michael W. Chee of the SingHealth Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory in Singapore conducted research in 2007 on the ways in which Asian and American subjects processed information. Using cognitive tests and Magnetic Resonance Imaging they proved that the Asian subjects tended to pay more attention to the context, or background, of images, while the American subjects paid more attention the central or dominant feature of the image.

How does this apply to website design, you may ask? Well, it means if you’re designing a website for an American audience, you’ll want to get straight to the point, but if you’re designing a site for the Chinese market, you might want to focus more on your imagery, background and the overall message your site is sending out.

When you’re looking at building a basic site which can then be translated into a series of localised domains for different markets, it’s a good idea to consider all of your different markets and what they’ll each require before starting out. Here are a few tips that might save you a lot of time and hassle down the road.

Top Level Domains

First things first, get yourself an in-country Top Level Domain (TLD) for each target market – not only will it make you look more reputable to the customers, but it will also help with boosting your rankings with the in-country search engines.

Design

You need a design that is going to have strong branding and be instantly recognisable to link all of your localised sites together, but also flexible enough to cope with the different aesthetic demands of each different cultural group.

For instance, you might use more imagery and colour in your sites for Asian markets, while your European sites might be more minimalist, with navigation via drop down menus rather than via on-screen gifs.

Keeping your navigation bars horizontal should save you some headaches when it comes to switching between right-to-left and left-to-right languages, and remember that different character sets will mean changing your line widths and heights.

Colour

Colour is a crucial point – it can signify a lot, and can mean very different things in different countries. For instance, in the west, green is generally the colour of nature and the environment, but it’s also a special colour in Islam.

Don’t mess up like telecom company Orange did when launching in Northern Ireland and choose a colour inextricably linked with religion and conflict. If you’re after a safe and happy medium, green or blue backgrounds with black or white text have been shown to be the most universally approved.

Font

Keep it simple – Times New Roman, Arial or Verdana are generally considered the least offensive to the eye.

Imagery

Remember that your imagery will need to change between localised sites – your Indian customers don’t care to see a bunch of photos of Russian people enjoying your product, and vice versa; customers need to be able to relate directly to the product.

As always, when designing across cultures, sensitivity is key – if you’re making a site for a conservative culture, steer away from all indecent imagery. Many cultures will find certain imagery more offensive that others.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will save you plenty of hassle by allowing table-less design and by keeping your content separate from your design – absolutely essential if you’re planning to change the language of your content between each local site.

You don’t want to have to go redesigning every page from scratch. CSS also allows for smaller file sizes, which is handy for fast page-loading.

Unicode

If you’re switching your text between half a dozen languages, you’re going to need a flexible character encoding tool. Luckily Unicode UTF-8 provides exactly that, with a unique code for every character in over 90 languages, so whether you’re called upon to switch text into simplified Chinese characters or to add in a few German ‘Eszett’ symbols (ß), you’ll be covered.

Flash

Try and avoid Flash (and Java) wherever possible – not only will Flash files slow down your page load times (which is no good for countries without high speed internet, not to mention that it’s now believed that Google has made page-load times a factor in its rankings algorithm), but text embedded in Flash files is also invisible to search engine bots, meaning it’s useless for your SEO strategy.

Translate

Perhaps most important of all – make sure that your content is correct. Web users are a savvy lot, especially when it comes to buying online, and if your copy contains spelling mistakes, or uses odd phrasing, or just feels ‘off’, then it’s unlikely you’re going to convince the customer that you’re a reliable retailer.

As tempting as it might be to save money by sticking a Google Translate widget on each page, automatic translation devices have no feel for the subtleties or the rhythm of a language – to do it properly you need to get a professional translator working into their language to translate your copy and make sure that it’s culturally appropriate for the target market.

This is especially true for your SEO keywords – the direct English translation is not always the most popular search term – a quick spot of research on a keyword search tool such as Google Adwords will help you to figure out which keywords to use prominently in your copy.