Are You Staying Ahead of Competitors in the Flash Design Industry?

When it comes to getting things done in the world of Flash, speed is your ticket. The industry is one of the fastest moving in the world, and designers that base their careers on Flash have to keep up with its constant developments or they will be left in the dust. And once you’re left behind, the market will definitely leave you there and not look back.

In order to make yourself a force within the Flash website designs industry, you must first figure out what your competition is doing in their work and campaigns. You can easily accomplish this by using free analytics programs of the major search engines, specifically Google. You simply look up the keywords that various designers are using to drive people to their webpages and see which ones are working and which ones are not.

You can also use these analytics programs to gather information about who exactly is giving your competition their business. You can cross-reference that with social media hubs to see exactly what interests these people have, how they are talking about the brand/subject/services at hand, and what you can do to drive their business your way.

Once you have all this information, you will very easily be able to see where they get new clients. You can then insert yourself into these information flows or you can create your own once you have figured out where you are strongest and where your opponents are weakest.

You want to make sure to modify your strategies for Flash templates in accordance with your strengths. You can check out review websites to see exactly where your customers think your competition is weakest. You can even get in contact with them directly through platforms such as Twitter. Using this information is like conducting your own free focus group to determine where you will best insert your presence.

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Designing Websites for iPads and Tablets

Tablet computing is a growing phenomenon as more users adopt iPads and its Android based counterparts. Modern websites have to consider the large tablet user base when coming up with their website strategy. Tablets have smaller screens compared to traditional monitors, which leads to websites appearing more condensed; not as small as mobile phones, but smaller nonetheless. Many users are even forgoing their desktops for these mobile wonders, so it is very important to consider the issues in your Internet strategy.

Tablets have screen resolutions that average in the range of 1024×768 to 1280×800 on a 10 screen, while your average desktop has a resolution of 1920×1080 on a 22 to 24 screen. This means that you have a lot less to work with as you design your website with tablets in mind. Large graphical elements and fixed width design can turn a great looking website into a disaster when loaded on a mobile browser. Many modern day websites contain flexible widths that scale with the screen resolution. This makes a lot of the content viewable on a wide variety of screen resolutions.

Another design choice that you will want to take into your Internet strategy is the fact that iPads do not support Adobe Flash and Adobe is phasing out support for Android. This means that many of your Flash elements might not be viewable on a tablet. If your site depends on Flash elements then you will want to ensure that an alternative site is in place for tablet users.

Many website designers create separate versions of their site for mobile browsers. This allows them to custom tailor content delivery to the smaller screens and limitations, while at the same time delivering robust websites to users on other platforms. This is a great website strategy to take if your site has a lot of graphic elements that don’t make a proper transition to the mobile web.

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Ensure Your Website Runs Smoothly with Regular Performance Testing

A person or company that maintains a complex website understands that it has as many lines of code and complex workings as a car engine. Just like a car engine, any type of website with embedded JavaScript or animation needs routine inspection and maintenance. Without it, users will probably start reporting bugs and/or poor service. Hackers can break in and cause trouble and programs might become obsolete versus new browser upgrades.

Web maintenance is the business of keeping the online branch of your business up and running. Many websites require skilled programmers to develop it, and anything so sophisticated needs experts to look at it and contribute even more from time to time. All websites are works in progress, so to speak, and like any engine that website needs a qualified operator.

Very large websites, with many functioning components and enormous amounts of data to process every second, sometimes have a full-time staff dedicated to keeping it up and running. Consider services such as Yahoo or Facebook; they have dedicated staff that constantly monitors performance. If anything goes wrong, they are there to work at it instantly.

Most businesses do not have a network anywhere near as broad as a social network or search engine, but something with a hundred pages and embedded coding needs someone to look at it on a routine basis. Website maintenance service is a third-party vendor that checks out a website every now and then. Sometimes a site is left to run until a problem arises, and then the programmer is contacted.

Maintaining a website is a job sometimes done by a solitary owner or administrator. It requires knowledge of JavaScript and HTML, and it requires knowledge of the web. It also means handling the computer that is acting as a server, if the company is not uploading to a supercomputer.

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Tips on Improving Your Website Landing Page

A landing page is the specialized webpage that appears when a potential client clicks an online advertisement or search-engine result link. Ideally, this page displays content relevant to the specific keywords or phrases that match the visitor’s expectations. Unfortunately, landing pages are becoming overly complicated data dumps where the average consumer is tormented with pop-ups, multiple focus points, talking heads and flashing pictures. No wonder so many business conversion rates continue to decline.

The first, and possibly most important, aspect to consider is the demographic to which you cater. Make a profile of the ideal customer for your business, and then use it as a model to design a landing page that will appeal to this demographic.

Once you’ve identified the correct demographic:

  1. Have an offer awaiting the visitor on your landing page, specifically instructing them of the course of action you want them to take. Adding a call-to-action will drastically improve conversion rates. As a general rule, people need to be told what to do, so explicit actions points are essential.
  2. Give users one option. If you can’t concisely summarize what the purpose of your landing page is, visitors will exit out of the page almost instantly.
  3. Keep it simple. You can hire the most elaborate, savvy designer available, but keep in mind the problem with incredible designers: they have all the skills needed to make landing pages walk, talk, move and blink, yet too many people fail to realize this is the outright wrong approach. Instead, the design of your landing page should have a clean layout, with an appropriate stacking order of information and plenty of whitespace. The pages focus needs to be on getting your visitor to take action. Your graphics, images, video, etc., should be used to emphasize important elements. Remove all unnecessary distractions!
  4. Keep form length short. No one likes filling out a lot of forms, especially for a service they know very little about. As mentioned before, simplicity is key.
  5. Utilize an informal vernacular. No need to flaunt your extensive vocabulary on your landing page. Use simple, direct English to appeal to all readers.
  6. Display Credibility. Have a clean, professional website and landing page without broken images, embarrassing grammar mistakes, or any other gaffes that will undermine your ethos. Use logos that convey credibility, like awards your business has won or testimonials, for example. There are numerous companies that will offer similar services to that of your company; you want to assure prospective customers they are making the correct decision. By displaying credibility, you have taken a critical step to develop trust with your prospective client.


With these basic tips in mind, you will see your conversion rates improve.

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