Another trend in design and also which many designers have now adopted is that it is often good practice to start with the mobile design first. By planning the most important interface elements on a mobile layout you can decide which ones you may have to drop if they don’t fit. This will enable you to plan how the layout responds as your window grows, including one or two sidebars along with all the other page elements.  This trend in web design is aimed at the need to fill the mobile interface for all the many mobile devices which are used more frequently than the desk top PC. The shrinking world of desk top users are mostly happy whatever the layout is, as long as it all works properly, but the same cannot be said for the mobile platforms, therefore this can involve more expertise and planning. If the design is right for the mobile it’s easier then to plan for the larger screen.

Search Engine Optimisation

As mentioned before, the main reason to have a blog on your website is to increase your ranking with Google. Google values new content highly, and the simplest way to get fresh content on your site on a regular basis is to include a blog. You can also include keywords that are relevant to your type of business (things that people often search for) in your blogs. This will increase the chances of your blogs showing up on search engines, and ensure your site is seen by relevant people.

Positioning Yourself as an Expert

A blog can be used to position yourself as an expert in your particular field. By sharing your knowledge, expertise and advice, you will be seen as trustworthy and helpful by your customers and potential customers. Including interesting and unique content on your site can also drive traffic to your website via inbound links. Inbound links are also used by search engines to determine your site’s ranking.

To Interact with Customers

Customers have more trust in companies that they feel they can build a relationship with. A regularly updated blog is a great way to interact and develop a relationship with your customers. Invite your customers to comment on your blog posts, and use this to establish communication with them. This will help to cement your position as a credible and trustworthy company.

They are referring principally to XP’s inability to run any version of Internet Explorer later than 8. Released in 2009, version 8 of Microsoft’s web browser is likely to be the tool of choice for those still browsing the web on an XP machine. It is estimated that one in four PCs still run XP, with some locales, such as China, seeing a significant increase in that share. Indeed, XP is second only to Windows 7 in the top 5 operating systems currently in use throughout the world.

But why does this matter?

It is a given that your business’s website needs to be compatible with all modern browsers. Whether it be IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari, your digital shop window should not be restricted by the platform on which it is being viewed. For that reason, many web developers have been keen (for entirely respectable reasons) to drop support for older browsers.

Aside from increased cost in the development of websites, looking back rather than forward would mean a constrain on some of the modern features which are fast becoming standards of web design: responsive design and parallax scrolling, to mention but two.

Software architect, Troy Hunt, explains the problem with this way of thinking: “the current version of Chrome runs just fine in XP. So does the latest version of Firefox. Safari is also good. Even Opera doesn’t have a problem! But there is one very big problem with all of these – none of them are ‘standard’.”

Essentially, this means large institutions such as schools, universities and banks are likely to have a preferred IT infrastructure and, as a result, a far slower upgrade cycle. For that reason, many of the most crucial computer networks throughout the world are still based on old technology such as Windows XP and, consequently, are probably using IE8 to browse the web. Ignoring that browser during your website’s development will alienate a massive proportion of potential clients.

At some stage, support for IE8 (and XP, in 2014) will cease, but until that time, it is important to ensure that your business website is still fit for purpose when it comes to Microsoft’s older browser, so don’t be afraid to ask your web developer to ensure that is the case.

In the meantime, the brewing of a ‘perfect storm’, cooked up by XP and IE8, will be essential viewing for the web development community.

Linkedin is according to a 2012 study, the best social network for generating B2B leads. Bearing this in mind, it’s vital you understand how to generate your own leads effectively, especially given that the visitor-to-lead conversion is about four times higher than Twitter and seven times higher than Facebook.

To convert these leads you need more than the average advice which suggests you sign up, fill out your profile and join some groups however, as a more effective strategy needs to be taken.

Generate new leads with Linkedin ads

Creating your own Linkedin advertisements is a highly effective way to get new leads signed up to your website, especially if you’re in a high end business. Statistics show that 59% of Linkedin members are managers or senior-level executives and therefore might be willing to spend money with you.

You can choose two type of ads, CPC which pays by the click, or CPM which pays by the number of impressions. You can include ads on high traffic pages, profile pages and what’s more, you can target the audience you’re looking for. Plus if it’s not working, you can stop the ads at any time.

These targeted adverts can also be separated by other categories such as a person’s job title and function, industry and company size, seniority and age or by Linkedin groups. If you want to generate more leads for your business, consider placing a Linkedin advert and see if it makes a difference to your sales conversions.

This can only mean one thing: sales of tablets are on the increase. Tablet sales are now expected to exceed 100 million this year and with smartphones also topping the sales figures, web designers are starting to redesign websites to make them more mobile and tablet friendly.

Popular social media news website Mashable is taking the lead with this and has already optimised its website to make its overall design friendly for mobile users. They have done this by widening their layout design so that when you shrink the browser the content then resizes to fit it.

Mashable has made this change because 30% of their website traffic is mobile and by the end of 2013 they expect this figure to be closer to 50%. The increase in mobile web traffic has even seen a rise in apps. Mobile apps may seem like the obvious solution as it allows the user the option of navigating the website as they would on a desktop browser, or choosing the app which is optimised for mobile navigation.

The question for web designers is whether to build separate apps for their website or to redesign their site to have a faster response time. Web content is being accessed from a variety of different sources. Responsive web design is therefore all about designing for the future generation of web users who increasingly want to view web content on a variety of platforms.

For advertising agencies this has meant asking for more advertising space for less money. But the trouble with this is that it can make the web page look crowded and unattractive. In part, some of this could be a misunderstanding between web designers and their readers. This is because web designers often work on large monitors, while in contrast the screen size which their readers use to view content is diminishing as tablets, smartphones and notebooks remain popular.

The key here for digital media products such as news websites is to balance the design and content they produce in a way which is harmonious, so there’s no white space for example. It doesn’t seem to matter if the digital product is subscription based or not either, although the news sites which use adverts sparingly tend to be the organisations with strong editorial values. Problems occur however when the news site’s main source of income comes from the adverts, as it becomes a challenge to fit them all onto the page properly.

News sites may need to be careful about this in the future as Google has recently announced plans that it’s looking into whether or not to penalise advertisement heavy pages. The head of Google’s spam team said “If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it,” he told publishers. “Do [readers] see content or something else that’s distracting or annoying?” The company are already testing out algorithms which would help to determine these factors.

Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving in the USA which marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. These statistics provide an intriguing insight into how web consumers make their purchases during this period.

These statistics are particularly interesting given that the 2011 figures were 9.84% for mobile sales and 0.53% for social media. This suggests that the number of mobile users is increasing exponentially as devices such as smartphones are now providing a more streamline internet experience to make online shopping easier. Meanwhile as more tablets such as the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy are being sold as devices for accessing internet on the go, it’s reasonable to see why the number of mobile sales has increased.

On the other hand, social media sales have most likely dropped because of the increase in social media traffic across sites such as facebook and twitter in general. It is also harder to get your sales message to stand out on a medium such as twitter, which could be one reason why sales from social media channels have stagnated this year. This could explain the decrease of more than 35 per cent in this category since 2011. These statistics also give an insight into which areas internet retailers should focus their marketing skills on and where improvements need to be made in the future.

Rent the Runways, who rent designer dresses for special occasions, have decided to recruit models from their own customers. Customers photograph themselves in the dress and upload it, allowing potential customers to see how it really looks. They can see how a woman of their size and shape looks when wearing the dress, rather than a size-6 model.

The company says their sales have rocketed since introducing this feature, with customers themselves backing this information up by saying that they would be far more likely to buy clothes from a company if they can see them modelled on a woman who looks more like they do. The trust factor is also huge, with potential customers able to see what other customers thought of the dress rather than what the company itself is telling them. Will other online clothes retailers follow suit, though? It remains to be seen, but this small sample certainly does look very promising indeed.

Simply explained, its use in web design is the collection of different background text and images that create an altered sense of depth to the user. The use of parallax scrolling is now becoming more and more popular and we can see the evidence in the trendy new website designs.  There are four parallax methods that can be utilized for scrolling and they are Sprite, Raster, Layers and RPM (Repeated Pattern Manipulation)

SPRITE – This is where many images or bitmaps are combined in to psuedo-layers to create one image and if this image is flat it can also visually appear three-dimensional, or just one part of the image.

RASTER – To refresh and composite the lines of pixels within an image in a top to bottom order, implementing a minimal delay between the lines.

LAYERS – Defining the multiple foreground and background layers as they move horizontally or vertically, and scrolling at different speeds which are dependent on the users interaction or automatically controlled, or a combination of both.

REPEATED PATTERN MANIPULATION – This means to create multiple screens or tiles floating over repeated background images.

There are many tutorials you can research on the internet that give in depth information and instruction on parallax scrolling.

With a larger screen than previous iPhones, the 1136×640 resolution means that designers will have to refocus their efforts on making the most of this new screen real estate. With screen dimension standards no longer existing, fluid websites will become far more important.

Your design should, of course, be tailored to all mobile providers and devices, but it’s hard not to ignore the iPhone 5 as the market leader. It’s also well worth embracing retina display and ensuring your graphics and images are up to spec, as this technology is being rolled out across the Apple range, including on the new MacBook Pro. Ensuring you keep ahead of the game will make your company stand out in front of your competitors and keep those with the latest equipment keen to visit your website more regularly.