Before I actually start to tell you about how good or bad 2013 is going to be with respect to web design trends, let’s take a look at 2012.

2012 was a good year for WordPress users throughout the world. People were witnesses of two major releases of WordPress – Green and Elvin. Only these two releases make 2012 a good year for WordPress development. Besides, it underwent a few significant changes as well. The Theme Customizer came into being with Media manager being revamped. The Links manager perished. However, not all the changes were accepted with enthusiasm.

WordPress users were not pleased with the new Media Manager. It appeared to be great for creating a gallery, for example, but it was not the best solution if one needed to enter a link to a given image and insert it. Some people didn’t like new WordPress user base and raises their voices against its shape. However, all in all, 2012 was a terrific year for WordPress development with multiple positive changes.

So now we’re ready to turn our focus on 2013 and see what it’s going to be like for WordPress development. It already looks very promising. Last year we heard Matt Mullenweg mentioning mobile publishing for WordPress. This year there are no reasons for this not to happen. I don’t see radical revamp of the user-interface. But what I envision is appearance of many mobile-friendly innovations. Touch-friendly zone is going to see many new developments.

New design trends happen to take birth without a warning. And yet, the paramount trend that I foresee is the Metro style. What does it mean? This style means using bold and colorful blocks of content against a light background with minimum elements on it. Another trend that’s going to become popular in 2013 is the use of Parallax in WordPress themes.

Summing up all the above we can say that 2013 is going to be a good year for WordPress. The number of themes and plugins is going to rapidly grow, but frankly speaking, I’m sure that most of the innovations this year will be mobile-oriented.

You’re welcome to share your insight on the WordPress development in 2013. What are the new changes and additions or, otherwise, deletions that are going to take place this year? It would be nice to learn your views. Share your opinion with us!

A website is an important tool to grow the business of a company. It can perform multiple functions; it can both, attract the right customers and facilitate sales transactions. Therefore, to have a decent website of good quality is extremely important in these days. If you’re not a web designer yourself, you would need to hire the services of professionals who would be not only good at their job, but also creative and understanding. To create a website at the professional level a webmaster should be able to clearly see your business objectives and understand main requirements.

You can hire someone with an assembly line approach to design a website for your company. But the projects of such designers don’t stand out from the rest of the sites. You need to find someone who would understand all the nuances of your business and come up with the most practical and visually appealing solutions. And there are quite a few web design companies who manage to incorporate their customers’ brief while designing the site. A good example is e commerce websites.

Finding the right web design company

The most reliable way to check out the capability of a company is to look at the body of their work. In addition, you can always ask for a feedback from the previous customers who’ve already worked with a chosen company. Another important information that you absolutely have to find out is the scope of the services provided by a company. Do they also offer website maintenance, domain registration, SEO services, web development, web hosting, graphic design services, etc. In any case, what you’re looking for is a company that would interact with you and move in the same direction to achieve your business goals.

Important aspects of web design

A simple fact of having a website doesn’t amount too much unless it serves its purpose. This is where it’s important to know that the site has got all essential ingredients for success. The graphics just as well should on a top level because the look of your website is a major aspect in drawing in traffic. The placement of links has got to be professional. The last, but not the least factor that should be considered while developing a site is its security. It shouldn’t be left to an amateur.

Search engine marketing of any existing business is a decisive aspect that has got a great influence on business success or its failure. The search engine marketing plan is designed for online corporations, businesses and organizations that are interested in improving their brand awareness, revenue generation and capability to retain customers on the site.

The main principle of the search engine marketing is to evaluate the potential of the current web site, its capability to generate leads, revenue and tactics used against the overall business objectives. Today all the new projects are generally evaluated on their return on investment (ROI) and online marketing potential. The search engine marketing plan is tailored to provide effective recommendations in the field of website usability, development, search engine marketing and web design.

Search engine marketing plan covers the five key components which are: market analysis, website analysis, review process, delivery and conversion enhancements. Let’s take a closer look at each of these components:

Market analysis

This component is totally client’s business oriented. When one talks about market analysis, he implies analysis of strength, weakness, opportunities, threats and competitors’ market. All market trends, needs, positioning of the products, services and website itself are determined by market analysis. A market analysis also identifies the technologies and competitive threats that may help a client achieve his business objectives and goals. The competitive analysis includes the research of three major competitors of the client and evaluates their search engine marketing strategy, pricing, merchandising strategy and online marketing strategy to come up with a decent plan.

Search engine marketing strategy

The search engine marketing strategy reviews the online business, client’s goals and objectives, the targeted audiences, budget of the business, search engine visibility and strategy.

Website usability analysis

This type of analysis provides a professional review of the content, architecture of the site, entire usability and capability of the site.

ROI and search engine implementation plan

This plan completely depends on the budget and clients’ goals. ROI plan covers the following aspects:
- keywords research and selection;
- search engine optimization;
- return on investment projections;
- website development and or conversion enhancements;
- internet yellow page submission.

Designing and developing a website is not an easy task. The entire process involves various software functioning for the life-cycle of web development. The process of developing a site starts from creating the simplest static page development and ends with the complex internet applications, electronic businesses, social network services, etc.

There are certain steps that all web development companies usually follow whilst creating a project, however, a professional development company certainly has the right vision how to build a website according to the theme and competition industry.

Professional web developers know the specific methodologies and the latest additions which are required to construct a well-functioning website.

Before you actually start to develop a website, it’s important to define the aim of the site and for what purpose you’d like to create it. Having sorted all these issues, you’re ready to move to the next stage – to build a website.

Web development company should be very professional to be able to convert innovative ideas into website functionality. Besides, website owners are all interested in having unique functionalities, themes and layouts.

Nowadays you have a great variety of website development companies where you can hire a webmaster to for your specific business needs. Professional and well-skilled web developers who are experienced and confident about what they’re doing are capable to develop a website that would attract visitors on a regular basis.

The more traffic your website gets, the more successful your website will be on the Internet.

If you want to create a successful web project, you need to thoroughly plan it first. It doesn’t matter how big the task is, a professional approach should be applied to every task before the actual work begins. And this is especially true about website development. Both, a client and a web developer should be thinking of an effective strategy for the site to perfectly fit the entire business concept.

A lot of questions should be asked before starting a project. Here’s a list of questions to consider:

• What are the objectives of the website? What needs to be achieved?
• What is the targeted group of customers: their age, interests, geographical location, ethnicity, etc.
• What emotions and feelings do you expect your website design to evoke?
• How are you going to express the vision of the business? What tools will you apply?

Of course, that’s not the whole list of questions you should ask. That’s just the beginning. The whole planning process involves so much more and a lot of fun just as well. You may find it very enjoyable when you get to think of all the ways to present your brand on the web. In general, there are basically two perspectives to keep in mind and they are:

• what your brand is;
• how the customers will experience it.

The important part of web development process is to keep the original goals of the website in mind. Often times, websites are built just around the client’s goals and little consideration about users’ needs. Generally, such websites fail to create a positive impression and retain customers.

You can fill your website with the content full of professional industry jargon to build trust in the website user, but overdoing it can leave your customers somewhat confused. It won’t be surprising if they’d prefer a site of your competitors who managed to present their information in in a clearer manner. Always think of the end users and their needs. When they come to a certain website, they’re searching for some answers. Thus, don’t over-complicate the things for your customers.