How to Choose The Right Web Development Company

Nowadays, businesses are looking for third-party companies to help them reach their objectives without having to increase internal overhead. This kind of outsourcing is usual for projects that need extra effort or specific skills.

In the current marketplace, you require more than a digital presence to attract your target audiences. If you do not have an interactive and professional website, it will be challenging to gain your investment.

However, many business owners do not know that a business site should have features such as fast loading, enabled CMS, SEO Savvy, Strong security, fast loading, tracking enabled, among others. These features help businesses to reach out to more users.

To have all these features and more, you should leave the web development process to a professional web development agency.

How do you tell you are choosing the right web development partner?

While choosing the right partner can be challenging, start by checking these main web development variables.

• Quality. Check the quality of design, especially if you are working in a field that requires the latest technology.
• Speed. How long do you want the web development process to take? The longer the time used, the more costly the project will be. You can allow your web development partner to choose for you the most cost-effective schedule. If not, then be ready to pay more for the project.
• Cost. Both the quality and the speed influence the cost of a successful web development project. If you want a high-quality website at the fastest development period, you will have to pay more. If your budget is tight, you will be needed to decide about the speed and the quality.

Factors to Consider When Choosing the Right Web Development Partner

1. Make Provision ahead of time

Interview various web development firms to see how they work and how they can help you achieve your goal. Check their websites as well as reviewing their portfolios. When you decide to meet, follow the following steps to make it productive.

• Have an idea of your budget
• Check other websites in your field of work as well as outside to look for features you would like on yours.
• Determine your priorities and goals for the site

These steps will help you have the most productive project and help you find the best web development firm.

2. Freelancer vs Agency vs small firms

All these experts are qualified, but who will meet your needs? If you are on a tight budget, hiring a freelance developer may be your best option. Sometimes, freelancers have less expertise or do not have all the resources for a successful web development project. However, they are more flexible and cheaper.

Small firms are more specialized in their work. They are creative since they have to be diligent with their resources to be productive. A small firm may not be fast compared to an agency, although their quality is comparable.

Agencies are fast, creative as well as costly. Many companies will claim to have all services under one roof, which is true for some. However, others partner with other smaller companies. If you need assistance with the larger advertising picture and your site project, an agency is what you need.

All the above levels are right partners; the question is, who will fit your needs the best? Remember the web development variables? Now is the right time to use them.

3. Know what you want

What do you want for your project? Do you want to redesign it? Do you want applications developed? Do you want assistance with content? Don’t look for a web development partner who will only give you design. Ensure they have all the resources to make your project complete and effective.

4. Focus beyond the launch

Mostly, people are only focused on getting their websites created. When looking for the right web development firm, focus on what will happen even after completing the project. How will the website be updated? Are there aims of using web analytics to improve your website?

The best web development agency should partner with you even after the project is complete. However, they are the ones that should outline steps and give you the way forward.

5. Experience

No matter the type of web development company you choose, you have to make sure they have experience. Expertise in your field is important, but expertise working on various projects is key.

• Have they handled a web development project similar to yours?
• Have they come across complex projects like yours?

Analyze their development expertise and their ability over various skills. Ensure they are well-skilled in front-end and back-end, algorithms, databases, web development best practices, and different architectures.

6. Communication and Collaboration

How the company communicates is crucial for your project. Before hiring them, reach out to the vendor and assess how they communicate following the following.

• Will they be available on various communication channels such as Skype, e-mails, phone, among others?
• Who will you contact for your feedback, concerns, and queries?
• How long will you wait for the response?

7. Ask for work samples and references

Consult other business owners who have gone through the web development process with the company you wish to choose. Discuss their experience with deadlines, project management, responsiveness, availability, and more. Go through the samples the company has showcased and narrow down what you like and dislike about them.

8. Can they afford the trial period?

After weighing your options and are still unsure about the web development firm, ask them for a trial period of about two to three weeks. You can give them a particular part of the project and monitor how they will handle it and if it will work for you.

During this period, observe their work to see if it is worth working with them or not.

9. How are their web hosting services?

It is important to know if they are offering a dedicated hosting platform service or virtual. Virtual is the right web hosting as it handles spikes in traffic. Also ask:

• How often do they back up websites?
• How long are the backups retained?
• What is the processing power of their hosting platform?

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12 Essential WordPress Themes for Designers in 2021

Every great WordPress theme has its advantages and limitations. Simply put, you want to pick a cool WordPress theme that features more of the former and fewer of the latter. If you’re really into it, you’ll want to get a WordPress theme from whose authors who have managed to maximize the theme’s advantages but eliminate those pesky limitations.

Only then, you are able to build the best possible website for your client or for your own purposes.

Selecting any of the following 12 top WordPress themes could place you in that idyllic situation.

Be Theme

It’s 40+ core features including more than 600 pre-built websites. They’re combined with total sales in excess of 200,000. That has made BeTheme the biggest WordPress theme of them all. Size does matter when it comes to website building capabilities and theme popularity.

Rather than trying to mention every BeTheme core feature in a limited space, let’s focus on several key features that most web designers are likely to put into play for most of their projects.

These include:

• The Muffin Builder – which is a powerful drag and drop page builder. Combined with certain other core features, can make website building a walk in the park and a coding free adventure.
• The Shortcode Generator and Admin Panel gives users the flexibility needed to design and build a site down to the finest level of detail
• 600+ customizable pre-built websites enable users to get any project off to a rapid start. These professionally-crafted design aids provide inspiration and the basic functionalities for creating satisfying UXs.

Click on the banner and learn more about what BeTheme could do for you.

Total Theme

Elegant would be a good term to apply to Total’s design. Designed with perfection in mind, Total is a feature-heavy theme that still manages to be fast, flexible, and friendly.

• Because you can disable any feature you won’t be working with, this theme’s multiplicity of useful features won’t slow your progress
• Total’s Dynamic Template Function lets you customize layouts precisely the way you want them to look.
• The Theme Customizer does the same for changing fonts, colors, and column and section widths
• WPBakery is the page builder of choice, and Total also features useful and attractive selections of pre-made demos and page-building modules
• Total is WooCommerce friendly and compatible with all the popular WordPress plugins

Click on the banner and learn more about the many features and website-creating advantages Total offers web designers.

 Avada Theme

Avada’s 450,000+ users says a lot about its performance and its obvious popularity.  This all-time best-selling WordPress theme is most certainly deserving of a 5-star rating.

That said, Avada could be the best choice you could make, whatever your website-building plan is, but you’ll still want to dig a little deeper.

• Avada’s portable one-click demos, pre-built websites, and design elements lay out a smooth design path for web designers
• The drag and drop Fusion Builder, and the Fusion Page and Theme Options enable users to build complex sites without coding and speed up a project’s workflow in the process
• Avada always strives to continually improve and those improvements are reflected in its free lifetime updates
• 5-star support if you ever need it.

Avada lets you design what you want in the way you want to do it.

Uncode

Uncode is an ideal site-building tool for creatives, agencies, bloggers, and small businesses.

• This ThemeForest best seller can boast of more than 80.000 sales to date
• Among its key features is a unique WooCommerce Custom Builder that can create a supreme shopping experience
• Viewing Uncode’s showcase of user-built websites is a “must”. Click on the banner, visit the site, and you’ll be impressed.

MaxCoach

As a specialized theme for personal online coaching and education websites, MaxCoach proves to be the best assistant for building online portals to distance education, delivering one-on-one tutoring, and teaching/learning any subject from home.

MaxCoach enables users to:

• Easily set up courses, curriculums, quizzes, and tests with LearnPress LMS plugin
• Utilize remote education with Zoom Conference integration.
• Take advantage of Elementor – the best WP page builder as the main driver and speed up the process of building the platform.

TheGem

TheGem is considered by many to be the ultimate WordPress toolbox. Among its website-building features you’ll find:

• 400+ unique and creative multi-page and single-page ready-to-use websites
• Mix & match templates and two industry leading page builders: Elementor & WPBakery
• TheGem Blocks: pre-designed page sections designed to speed up workflows by making page building easier
• WooCommerce features and designs for creating engaging online shops

This 5-star rated theme is trusted by more than 50,000 customers.

Rey Theme

Rey isn’t just another WooCommerce theme. Its users will tell you Rey is the WooCommerce theme for WordPress.

A brief peek reveals:

• An invaluable selection of professionally-crafted templates
• Specialized WooCommerce tools and WooCommerce and Elementor integrations
• Built in SVG support
• Rey is SEO, user, and developer friendly

Click on the banner to learn more about this impressive WooCommerce theme.

Aurum

The Aurum minimalist shopping theme is especially suitable for creating bookstores, art stores, boutiques, and fashionable jewelry and clothing stores.

• Many premium plugins are included, such as: Advanced Custom Fields PRO, WPBakery Page Builder, Slider Revolution, Layer Slider, etc.
• This theme’s UberMenu compatibility makes it especially suitable for sites that will benefit from using mega-menus.
• Aurum’s pages load quickly and are 100% responsive
• Aurum is compatible with the most widely-used WordPress plugins, and several are included at no cost.

Hongo

It would pay you to see what Hongo has to offer if you have your sights set on building a small business, blogging, or WooCommerce website.

This next-generation theme’s key features include:

• Valuable selections of templates, store demos, and creative design elements
• Product-oriented features like quick view, compare, wish list, and product display filters
• The Hongo theme also features a selection of popular plugins

Hongo is fast and flexible, and it’s also SEO friendly.

XStore

It’s amazing what you can get for $39. A glance at XStore’s features suggests that with the press of a button, XStore will build your online store for you. That’s not far from the truth, thanks in part to its:

• 100+ pre-built shops and full Ajax shop
• Single Product Page Builder
• $500+ valuable plugins

Quite a lot for the price.

KnowAll

This popular knowledge base theme will place the FAQ page in the dustbin of history.

• Customers can get 24/7 instant answers to their questions
• They don’t have to be put on hold to get an answer over the phone
• KnowAll’s actionable analytics and search features provide them with relevant information they can use
• Customer support staff isn’t tied down answering repetitive questions

Click on the banner and learn how to keep your customers smiling.

Pofo

This 2020 top WordPress theme is set to make an encore in 2021. It’s a smart choice for building a portfolio, blogging, or online store.

• Pofo’s custom shortcodes give users all the flexibility they need, in tandem with the WordPress Customizer
• Popular premium plugins are included in the package as are a host of trendy demo and home pages, and pre-built elements
• Pofo’s users receive first-class customer support.

*******

The ability to create an engaging, high-performance website requires having the right tools at your fingertips. For WordPress users those tools will usually be found in the top WordPress themes – like the 12 described here.

Find popular WordPress Themes that you believe will best fit your needs (several would likely qualify). Then you should have no problem at all creating a stunning websites that features a visitor-friendly UX.

As far as finding a “best fit” is concerned, don’t spend too much time worrying about it. You won’t find any wrong choices here.

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Design your way

So, you’re already a Canva user, and you want to learn how much is Canva Pro?

Or maybe you want to start using Canva and you need to figure out the different price options they have?

We’ll show you all the info you need in this article.

But first, let’s see how we got here.

In today’s climate, former trends have been taking the attention, with their new modern twist given by designers.

The need and value of graphic designs have become more significant over the years, and if you are into design or marketing, or even just by owning a business you most likely know what Canva is.

Canva is an online design tool that lets you create visual designs for both live and online use. Overall, Canva definitely makes online design processes of any kind of visual material a lot simpler in several key categories.

Canva’s platform is so simple that no prior knowledge or training is needed to create gorgeous graphics for social media, blogs, or product images. Canva offers us a free version that is open to everyone and at all times, and a professional version referred to as Canva Pro, the professional version is for those who work using Canva or for those who intend to make professional projects and need better design options. In case you have tried Canva’s free version you probably got the impression that it’s the best

free online platform for graphic design. Although that is true, there is a handful of features that may ease or improve your graphics that are available with Canva Pro.

There are some users that are unsure when deciding whether to pay for the professional version or to go with the Canva free version, so that is why we are here to help you make the choice. 

What is Canva Pro? 

Canva pro is the professional premium plan for Canva that allows designers, bloggers & online business owners to have a workspace with all the essential tools they could use to create on-brand graphics. The premium plan is acquired by payment for a membership. Here we will explain all the gadgets and features you will get that are unavailable in the free version. 

Best added Features of Canva Pro 

One of the best new features is the ability to work with a team and add different levels for people: administrators, template designers, and members.

This is great for large and small businesses or for working with a designer.

This allows people to add templates for you without having to email links back and forth. 

What are the best features of Canva Pro? 

Definitely of the most important ones is the feature that allows you to work as a team and allow different level of permission for team members.

Teamwork is amazing for both large and small businesses or even when working with a fellow designer, allowing members to add templates and make changes directly instead of sending links to one certain person. 

Library of 60 Million Premium Images 

Using Canva’s free version you only get a certain number of pictures. Although some of them are pretty cool, picking from a limited amount can often get repetitive since everyone who uses the same platform for free gets the same images. Although there is an option to pay $1 per image to remove watermarks, the more cost-efficient is definitely to go for Canva Pro.

For a monthly subscription, Canva gave you up to 4 million premium images while using the Pro account. The other 56 million images were formerly available by additional payments, but

as of April 2020, Canva decided to open the library of all of the 60 million images for all premium members to access. There is no longer any charge for Canva Pro users.

A library of more than 1000 fonts

The Canva Pro plan also gives us the ability to choose from over 1000 fonts in their font library. That is a great way to stand out on social media, since there are so many users of the free version, and they get repetitive at times. On top of all that choice, they still let us upload our own fonts that we can get from different places on the internet. 

Magic Resize

If you have former experience in designing graphic templates, you most are most likely aware of the time consumed in re-creating your designs to be compatible with various formats & suggested ratios.

From a blogger’s perspective, it is very important to adjust the compatibility of your content to maximize efficiency on all the platforms you work with. Since each and every platform has its own post format and size, the magic resize feature will help you prevent re-creating designs again and again for different platforms.

Magic Resize lets you re-create your design into any dimension instantaneously and create copies of it in any size. It will restructure and reposition every part of the design to perfectly fit in the new size. It is possible that you will need to make a few adjustments to the design, but it’s nothing serious. 

Background Transparency

Using Canva Pro gives us the ability to design with transparent backgrounds. Meaning that when we upload a photo we can make its background transparent and not show it. From there we can put it anywhere on the design and even add it the background of our choosing. Using this helps us create logos and gives us flexibility with what we do with our designs.

Folder Organization

Canva Pro gives us the feature to leave our designs on our account, organize it into folders/sub-folders and share those same folders with other designers to promote teamwork.

We can also rename, delete and open the folders in editor. 

Export our designs as animated GIFs or .mp4 videos 

If you are interested in making attention-grabbing adverts for social media, Canva Pro has you covered. With Canva Pro comes a feature referred to as Canva Animator which assists us in adding animations and animated features to our designs with ease. You can easily create video pins to grow your Pinterest traffic using Canva Animator.

Canva offers us a handful of short videos that we can add to our designs. If you are having difficulty finding which one you want, they are categorized to help you find the right one for you. This feature holds true to the easy to use Canva drag & drop system with elements you can edit with a few clicks. You can use many 2D and 3D animations like fade, slide, bounce, etc. You can create your designs in both GIF or mp4 formats.

Storage

Cloud storage may not sound like something impressive, but it definitely comes in handy from time to time. Although you already get 1GB of storage which is nice but runs out quite fast.

Considering the amount of material you will probably be storing if working with Canva professionally, that is also a reason to buy Canva Pro. With Canva Pro we get unlimited storage with the capability to organize in folders, categorize, group and share which can end up being quite time efficient in the long run. 

Brand Kits

Making your own Brand Kit can offer you quick and easy access to your brand’s colors and fonts as well as creating and saving templates you have created. This is time-efficient when it comes to consistency on big team projects and overall pretty handy. Brand Kit also allows you to keep all of your brand assets up to date and available.

Using this tool you can add custom fonts, color palettes, logos, design assets, and a lot more, improving your efficiency and consistency in your graphics. 

Team Access 

Share a link to one of your designs using email, for a teammate to view, use or edit as a template. This is an important asset for selling your templates.

This feature is much better than the feature “share a link to edit” feature in the free version of Canva. If someone were to buy your templates and forget to make a copy before editing (which is so easy to do) they would change your template.

The Team functionalities asset gives you the capability to add different levels for teammates:

• Owners (you)
• Administrators
• Template designers
• Members

Content Planning

Do you post images to multiple social media channels or post more than one Pinterest Pin per day? You will love the newest feature of Canva Pro – the Content Planner.

The Content Planner allows you to visually lay out your images on a calendar for easy social media management. The Content Planner will not only display your images but will also post them at the times you choose.

Schedule your images and posts to your Facebook pages and groups, your Linked In profile, your Twitter account, and more.

Multiple Premium Download Options 

Although you can download your image designs as a free user, Canva Pro offers some additional options that may be of use to your business. 

Create custom templates 

As a designer, you have most likely created a design that you found amazing and a work of art, but no other of your designs will exactly look the same. Well in using Canva Pro, you can create your own template saving your designs for later use. You just publish your design as a template and it will appear on your brand page. 

Backgrounds 

Canva Pro gives its users access to more than 1000 backgrounds for us t choose from, and all of them are much better crafted than the free ones. Canva Pro gives us many different variations from patterns to textures, gradients, and images. If you have a vision for your design there will be something that suits it perfectly. 

Canva Print 

If in some cases you adore your designs so much that you want to hang them on your wall, Canva Print gives you an option to print and even order them if you so desire. 

Priority Support 

Subscribing to the Canva Pro plan gives you access to Canva’s 24/7 priority support system helping you out with any difficulty you might come across. 

Canva Pro’s whole purpose is to add more features to the already Canva free so that it can improve the quality and ease for your final designs. If you are still not sure about Canva Pro,

you can always give it a try with their 30 days free trial.

How much is Canva Pro?

In short: Starting from $12.95 if you want to pay monthly and $9.95 per month if you pay yearly.

Although Canva offers us the option of the free plan, the Pro plan is available for both monthly and yearly subscriptions. Just looking at the pricing, the value of the Canva Pro subscription is pretty obvious. Canva Pro can help you edit and design projects with ease for any purpose including businesses or projects, even if you’re not a professional designer.

Although the Pro plan has a monthly subscription, the Enterprise version only has an annual fee.

The pricing is pretty simple, there is only one plan that you can opt for either a monthly subscription of $12.95 a month, or a yearly subscription of $119.40 a year. Either way, the first 30 days are free. Although it’s a really cost-effective system, its use depends on what you plan on doing with its capabilities. 

Canva Pro Free 30 Day Trial

You can sign up for Canva Pro here. You will be asked to enter your card details, however, as long as you cancel within 30 days you won’t be charged.

Canceling is easy too (so none of this hard sell to get you to stay), it’s literally a button to cancel it. All that happens then is that your account goes back to the free version of Canva. 

While you could still use the free version to get this done, you would be limited in terms of images and functionality.

It’d take you more time, and the results wouldn’t be as significant.

If you are running a business with decent traction and want to gear your visual strategy up, Canva Pro is worth your time and your dime.

Being able to create animated gifs & professional looking designs, resizing, and transparent images in seconds is a huge benefit of Canva Pro.

You can sign up for Canva Pro on their website. Although the first 30 days are free, you will have to enter your card details and cancel the plan afterward if you don’t want to continue with the monthly subscription. Upon canceling it, your account becomes a free version one.

Although you could still use the free version, the efficiency and capabilities of the Canva Pro will be obvious right away and the results wouldn’t be the same.

If you are thinking about your business, Canva Pro is a great and cheap tool to make countless gifs, professional designs, resizing, transparent images and a lot more which makes

it a great deal for you.

If you enjoyed reading this article about Canva Pro and is if it is worth the cost, you should read these as well:

• Gimp vs Photoshop: What’s the difference and why pick one over the other
• Top Photoshop Actions For Photo Retouching Work
• Photoshop alternatives that you can use

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Design your way

Much has been said about influencer marketing over the last several years. Initially taking rooton early textual platforms like Twitter and pre rich-format Facebook, the concept of using individual social media users to tell a brand’s story in user-generated content (UGC) format has held a certain appeal for those that shun traditional ad formats. With the explosion of novel social networks focusing on a variety of new media niches, the design world has watched the evolution in real-time such as the Pinterest rapid maturation beyond simple fashion and recipe cataloging.

In the year 2021 and beyond, what’s the next frontier for design influencers? Will it be an extension into the short format videos and clever editing of networks like Tiktok or perhaps even higher tech focus on the exceptional world building capabilities of AR/VR?

Perhaps one of those next big frontiers is actually old school: the large format display of billboards.

How is this possible?

Think of billboards as an analog Instagram. One only has a couple seconds to visually convey the right message to the desired audience. Therefore, that message needs to speak to a specific demographic (person in the car), use a celebrity to catch attention, or a combination of both. The medium is typically used for mass appeal products/services, which is sad considering how many one can find for accident and injury attorneys. That said, this brings up a fantastic example to prove the point!

In the world of influencer marketing an influencer is generally categorized as aspirational, authoritative, or peer.

For simplicity sake, an aspirational influencer is someone the target audience aspires to be like. For most mass consumer products this is usually someone with celebrity status.

An authoritative influencer is someone the target audience respects as a known expert within the field.

Finally, the peer influencer is exactly what one might think — the peer group of the target audience. Which is the right type for designers to consider for billboards?

Consider the example again: the numerous accident and injury attorney cutouts that line most metro freeways across the United States. This larger than life advertising found along busy roadsides currently fixates on a gigantic phone number and aggressively smiling lawyer in a desperate attempt to convey trust to the everyday driver that might perchance recall the advert later in the driving journey should it be needed.

From our understanding of the target audience, is an appeal to expertise the correct play? If the target audience truly believed in the authority conveyed by the attorney, then the psychological trigger might be appropriate. However, as stated earlier on mass appeal products, the best triggers tend to be either aspirational, peer, or a combination of both. Since it can be difficult to accurately peg the peer group of a randomized group of drivers, let’s focus on aspiration influence: the ideal set of celebrities that might make sense in such advertising.

To begin that journey, consider the list of celebrities you might know that have a history of needing quick legal help. As the influencer selected needs to convey a sense of humor or warmth and not animosity, it would be wise to shy away from major issues. The names that come to mind might be someone like Nick Nolte, Charlie Sheen, or Lindsay Lohan. Now consider celebrities that have played prominent lawyers on television or in the cinema; Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul), Gabriel Macht (Harvey Specter character in Suits), Andy Griffith (Matlock) could be possibilities.

With that list, you’ll want to try and get the broadest appeal so recency matters as fast facial recognition is necessary. Trimming off those out of the limelight the longest we can cross off Nolte and Griffith. Next, affordability will come into question so the actors with the greatest wealth might not work. With a quick and potentially inaccurate Google search, Odenkirk seems to have done the best with his recent franchises, followed by Macht. Left with two possibilities, a brand could then make the pitch to both or select the least expensive: Lohan.

What might that ideal influence look like from a designer’s perspective? Imagine a slightly smiling Lohan giving a palms raised shrug on one side of a vehicle, opposite of that aggressively smiling lawyer suggesting something to the effect of “Don’t worry, I can help.”

By simply adding the context of a celebrity that’s a known quantity in the realm of the audience’s understanding of product use, the advertising is elevated to an entirely different level. Not only does it contain the previous attempt at authoritative influence, it has injected an element of aspirational influence, and it shows a potential fellow individual in need…a peer. Psychologically, this use of influencers to provide a deeper connection is why billboards might just be the next big thing for the industry.

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