When we consult with a new client, we talk about the content for their site. How will the content on your website be organized? We begin by planning out a site map that will help us plan the menu and be a roadmap for the developers as they assemble the various parts of the website. In WordPress, your content is either put on a page or a post.

What is a Page?

Pages are static, permanent parts of your website. They aren’t affected by the date, and while they can be edited, their overall structure doesn’t change. Pages are listed in your site’s menu and include your home page, about page, and contact page, among others.

What is a Post?

Posts are more like newspaper articles. You frequently update them with new content to keep your readers coming back. They can be displayed in chronological order or reverse chronological order. You can also customize the way they are displayed. For example, some people like to keep one post pinned to the front of their blogs. This is called a sticky post.

When people think of posts, they usually think of blog posts. But there are other kinds of posts. For example, many businesses share press releases on their website using a custom post type.

On e-commerce sites, products’ sales pages (which are actually a custom post type) are organized into categories, just like they would be in a brick-and-mortar store.

Organizing Your Posts

Recently we met with a client who is a prolific writer—and a good one! He has been adding content to his blog for years and now has hundreds of posts. In planning his new website, we discussed ways to make it easier for readers to access the specific content they search for on his site. We came up with several solutions that would create an appealing, well-organized website. But the first job was to put the content into categories.

Organize Your Website With Categories

If you put the posts from your website into a book, you would want to do it in a way that makes sense. You would organize it in whatever way works for your business, and the names of those categories would be the table of contents, showing readers the main topics you would be covering. If they prefer to get right to the matter, they are interested in, and they can bypass the chapters that don’t pertain to them and read the one that does. That’s what categories do.

Don’t Let Your Website Be “Uncategorized.”

All WordPress posts must be categorized. If you don’t organize your posts, WordPress will do it for you, placing them under the heading “uncategorized.” By the way, it is a good idea to change that to something else like “other.” “Uncategorized” looks like you didn’t finish the details of the post.

If you have a health and nutrition site, your categories might be:

•       News
•       Nutrition
•       Mindfulness

These are Pretty Broad Topics 

That’s why you can also use subcategories to organize your website posts.

 News

COVID-19

Nutrition

Vegan

Keto

Gluten-Free

 Diabetic

Weight Loss

Mindfulness

Mindfulness Apps

Mindfulness Techniques

Even the subcategories are broad, but at least they will get your readers pointed in the right direction (of course, you don’t have to use subcategories).

Limit Your Categories

Try to limit your posts to one category (occasionally two). At the same time, limit the overall number of categories to no more than ten. Keep the number of subcategories to a minimum, as well. This is better for SEO and the overall organization of your website.

There are, of course, exceptions. For example, large e-commerce sites often have many more categories.

Leave it to the Experts

At Iceberg Web Design, we create unique custom websites. We also offer hosting and maintenance packages that will give you security and peace of mind. Contact us today!

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Red

Red is an energizing color used to convey love, power, and even aggression. With red, context is essential, as well as the amount of red that you use. Used sparingly and in the right way, red can make quite an impact.

Pink

Pink is a softened version of red, romantic and hopeful, soothing and compassionate. It doesn’t stimulate the way red does so that it can be a good alternative in the right circumstance. But it can come across as immature, lacking power, so think carefully about what message you want to get across.

Yellow

Yellow connotes joy. It is the color children use to make a smiling sun. Why is the sun smiling? It just seems happy. Like red, yellow must be used sparingly. Too much yellow can cause feelings of anxiety.

Orange

Orange is a soothing color, representing the warmth of home, food, and family. Orange is motivating. The color of dark saffron and marigolds is also the most dominant color in India. You can see how significant orange is within eastern spirituality since Buddhist monks, Sikhs, and Hindu saints all wear the color.

Blue

Blue makes us think of purity, dependability, and peace. It is universally well-liked. This is one of the reasons you see it used on prominent social media platforms. It brings a sense of trust and relationship building. The one caveat is that blue can also come across as distant and cold if you don’t balance with other elements.

Purple

Purple balances the physical energy of red with the spiritual reliability of blue. Portraying royalty, magic, and courage, it is a color that promotes creativity. If it is overused, it can cause people to become distracted by introspective thoughts.

Green

Green portrays many things, nearly all of them positive. Because nature is filled with an abundance of green shades, we think of green as life-giving, peaceful, natural, healthy, and harmonious. And of course, we associate it with money in the United States since our paper money is green. That is where the only negative can come in. If you wish to portray greed, you can use green for that, as well.

Brown

Brown is boring. There. I’ve said it. It’s a beautiful color, but it will never lift anyone up or prompt them to act. That said, it is also safe. It will never upset anyone, either. It’s just…. brown. Avoid it if you can. It won’t add to your marketing campaign at all.

Gold

Gold is a luxury color as much as gold is a luxury item. Don’t overuse it or you risk looking tacky and egotistical. It is a great accent color, though, especially when paired with another color that can convey the message you want to get across.

Learn More about Color Psychology for your Website

•         Hubspot did a button color test and found a red call to action button outperformed a green one by 21%.  That’s amazing! The only thing they changed was the color of the button.
•         Iconic Fox has created a fantastic infographic on color psychology.

How to Get Clicks

This brief overview barely skimmed the surface of how color affects our buying decisions. The good news is that you don’t have to become an expert on color psychology. Our web designers and digital marketers understand what makes consumers click. To increase your conversions, contact us today! 

The post Color Psychology and Your Website appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

In general, we recommend a total website makeover every two to three years to keep up with current design and development trends. Security is another reason for revamping your website every few years. But there are other indicators that it’s time for a new online look.

You’ve made changes to your core values or processes

Has your business received an internal makeover in the last year, but your branding hasn’t received an external one? Maybe you’ve hired new employees or had significant employee turnover. Perhaps you’ve increased your product offering or niched down to serve a more specific audience. Your website should reflect your business – values, services, staff, and processes. Businesses are ever-changing entities, and as yours grows and changes, so should your website.

You’ve Decided to Add Integrations to Your Site

Websites are no longer just for bringing in clients. They are business tools that you can use to hire people, portals for members, renters, or employees, payment centers, and more! If you can imagine it, it most likely can be done.

You’ve started investing in SEO or online ads

If you’re focusing on bringing traffic to your website, you want to make the best possible first impression on your new website visitors. Your website should be up to date and have a straightforward design that lets your website traffic know what they should do. Powerful calls to action on every page will help convert traffic into customers.

Your Site Doesn’t Have a Mobile-Friendly Design

Half of all website traffic comes from mobile users, yet not all websites are mobile-friendly.[1] When encountering a website that is difficult to view on smartphones or tablets, mobile users often become frustrated and leave for another site.

<side by side images of mobile-friendly vs. non-mobile design>

Your Page Loads Slower Than 3 Seconds

Google ranks websites primarily for customer experience. Page speed is an essential factor in a website user’s experience. People are impatient and will click back on a slow site.

•         The ideal website load time for mobile sites is 1-2 seconds.
•         53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
•         A 2-second delay in load time resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%.

How fast is your website? You can find out by using Google’s Page Speed Insights. Just put the page URL into the search bar at the top of the page, and within a minute, you will know whether it is fast (green), slow (red), or somewhere in the middle (yellow).

You Wrote Your Website Content

Most business owners write too technically because they know their business’s ins and outs and want to share it all. Professional content writers write from a sales standpoint. We know how to attract site viewers and convert them into customers. We also know how to increase your ranking on a Google search engine results page. This will make your site easier to find when someone searches for a business like yours online.

Nobody is Filling Out Your Website Contact Forms

If people visit your page, but they aren’t filling out your contact form, it is a good indication that you need a layout upgrade, content with the right calls to action, and maybe even a giveaway or lead magnet.

Your top competitor just redesigned their website

If you are going to compete, you have to play on the same field. We always look at what the competition is doing when we redesign a website.

Are you ready for your new website? Contact us today!

[1] Clement, J. “Mobile Percentage of Website Traffic 2020.” Statista, 19 Nov. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/.

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Features are notable additions to a website that make it unique and useful to your visitors and your company. These features are also more challenging to design, so often, they add an extra charge to your bill. The good news is, they are usually well worth it!

In this article, we will look at 3 of the most basic features or add-ons to your site:

•         Transfer of a WordPress Blog
•         Custom Post Type
•         Photo Galleries

Transfer of a WordPress Blog.

Often when clients come to us, they have an old site with many blog posts. All of these URLs are valuable for SEO. If we pull them off the web, any backlinks or bookmarks people may have saved will end up leading to a 404-error page, telling the user that the page can’t be found. This is an easy way to lose a potential customer, and your site’s SEO will take a significant hit.

To prevent this, we always recommend transferring your WordPress blog to your new site. Anything you don’t want to move over, we will redirect you to your new home page during the site’s development.

Custom Post Type

WordPress is an extensive content management system (CMS). WordPress content is arranged by post types and by default by:

•         Post
•         Page

Anytime you have content that isn’t a post or a page, you can create a custom post type. Perhaps you are selling something. The most popular custom post type is Woo Commerce products. A product page would be a custom post type.

Other examples would be:

•         Book Reviews
•         Movies (for a movie theater)
•         Services

Anything. The main thing about a custom post type is that it will have customized fields to input data. Let’s look at the example of movies. You might have fields for:

•         Movie Title
•         Synopsis
•         Starring
•         Rating
•         Showtimes
•         A ticket buy button

This will create consistency in the appearance of the movie pages. Also, the movies will all be organized together on the backend of the site, making them easy to find.

Photo Galleries

Photo galleries are a great way to show off your services. If you own a construction or remodeling company, you can display pictures of the homes or businesses you have built or remodeled. If you are a Salon owner, you can show examples of your work, such as adding hairstyles, highlights, haircuts, etc.

We can use plugins to display your photos beautifully. Some plugins will integrate your photos with social media, such as Pinterest or Instagram.

Creating a website can be a complicated process. Our team of WordPress Experts does it every day, so you don’t have to. If you want a new website for your business, contact us today!

The post WordPress Features Including Blog Transfers, Custom Post Types, & Photo Galleries appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Trying to build your website yourself is like being your own lawyer or Real Estate agent, or dentist. There are many reasons why we hire those people and others to do the things they were trained to do. They have the experience to do an exceptional job.

A Professional Web Developer is FAST

Our developers have made hundreds of websites. Because of that, they are efficient. From the first conversation they have with a client, they start thinking about what the client needs for their site and how to make that happen.

The Pros Follow Industry Standards and Best Practices

There are things you should do to keep your website fast that most people don’t know. There are also things to avoid.

Web developers and designers know the industry standards that improve access to information on the web. We follow those practices with every website we build. This ensures that people with visual and other impairments can access the same information as someone with 20/20 vision.

We can say, “That’s not a good idea, because…” when a client wants something that will harm their SEO or make it difficult for their website to accomplish its purpose. For example, you should never put text on an image.

Our developers also know the potential potholes that can show up along the way—and how to avoid them. This saves a lot of time and frustration.

Web Developers enjoy their work

Being on the back end of a website can be tedious. You often spend eight hours staring at your computer screen writing code, but developers love doing this, and they are good at it. It is a lot like a composer putting notes on a page that mean little to a layperson. But when the music is played, it’s beautiful. All that code becomes a symphony on your website.

Developers Have More Control Over Customization

They can combine features from multiple plugins and make them look cohesive by making changes to the code. As a client, you can come to us with your ideas, and the developer can make them happen.

A Professional Developer Brings an Outside Perspective

Clients are often too close to their project to see the big picture. That’s a normal thing. When we gather all of the information we need from you at your kickoff meeting, we can sort it out and put it together in a way that will attract customers and business contacts for your company.

The entire team at a Web Development company brings this outside perspective. We know the best way to assemble your site map and name the pages because we do this every day. We have professional content writers, SEO specialists, developers, designers, and a project manager to ensure your website project runs smoothly.

How is Your Website Doing?

Is it time for an update? Are you ready to give up trying to cobble one together on your own? We offer solutions to your business problems. Contact Iceberg Web Design to learn how we can help create a website that does what you want.

The post What Can a Professional Web Developer Do that I Can’t? appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Subscription vs. Custom Sites

When we build a subscription site, we put content unique to your business on a framework that we have used many times before. It’s similar to how every adult has about 206 bones in their body, laid out the same way, yet we all look different on the outside.

When we build a custom site, many details have to come together in new ways. Often the process can be complicated. Because of this, subscription sites take far less time than custom sites.

The Time it Takes to Write Content

Before we can send your project to the developer, we need to assemble the content. It takes much less time for us to write your content than it does for you to do it. That’s because we do this every day. We’re experts at writing content that converts!

The first thing we do is schedule a content interview. That’s when we ask you about your business and decide how to communicate your passion to your customers. About five days later, we send you the first draft of your website content. You make any changes you would like, and after we edit the content, we go through the process again. After those two revisions, the content goes to design and development.

Some people choose to have us consult rather than write the content. This often means several rounds of revisions, so it takes longer.

The Time it Takes to Gather Assets

Assets are things that will give your site visual appeal, like photographs, logos, and custom graphics. Do you have professional quality photos ready, or do you need to hire a photographer? We have a photographer that can usually get the photos taken and edited within two to three weeks. If you employ -your own, the time it takes will depend on their schedule and speed.

Logos usually take about two weeks since there is a questionnaire, revision, and design consultation. Custom graphics will take more than a week. Of course, these things are done concurrently rather than consecutively.

The Time it Takes to Design and Develop Your Site

The basic design of your site will take about a week. During this time, we create a home page and an interior page. The time it takes beyond that will depend on how complex the design is and how many revisions are needed.

After approval of the mockup, the site will go into development. The development of a basic site without features takes about five to twenty business days.

Other Factors that Affect the Time it Takes to Build Your Website

The overall size of a custom site makes a big difference. If you need twenty pages, it will be more time consuming than a ten-page site.

Features will also add time—especially if we create unique custom features for your site.

E-commerce sites are time-consuming. Just how much time they take will depend on the number of products you want to be listed. Sixty products will take less time than 6,000. A small e-commerce site will typically take at least 6-months.

You have much control over how long it takes to get your site live. Revisions, changes, options, and delivering assets late will cause your project to take longer.

We are Experts at This

Our tried-and-true process will keep your project moving forward while focusing on its unique needs. We’ve built hundreds of websites, and we do it well. If you are looking for a professional web developer, contact us today.

The post How Long Will It Take to Build My Website? appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA)

In the United States, plaintiffs have filed numerous lawsuits challenging websites and mobile apps, based on the Americans with Disabilities Act. A blind user filed one such lawsuit against Domino’s Pizza after being unable to use Domino’s mobile app. The federal district court ruled in favor of Domino’s since the Justice Department hadn’t yet established the guidelines for web accessibility. After an appeal, the Ninth Circuit overruled the district court, saying that Domino’s is a brick-and-mortar store and must meet the ADA. Since the mobile app was an extension of their services, it must also be compliant with the ADA.

Backed by many other restaurants and retail chains, Domino’s petitioned to the Supreme Court, arguing that customers with impairments have other, more accessible means to order. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which effectively upheld the decision of the 9th Circuit Court and required the case to be heard as it stands.

Website accessibility is good business

Regardless of what side the courts favor, it’s essential to pay attention to accessibility issues while designing your website, if for no other reason than it being good business. Your potential customers will come from a variety of backgrounds, have different impairments and needs. You should create your website so that all customers can fully utilize it. What are some of the things that you should pay attention to?

Visual impairments

Visual impairments include blindness, various common types of low vision and poor eyesight, and color blindness. Just because they don’t see the same way someone with 20/20 vision does, doesn’t mean that the 45 million blind people around the world don’t want to use the internet.[1] But, for that to happen, some adjustments need to be made at the design level of each website.

• Text and images should be large or enlargeable, so users with poor sight can more easily read and understand the content.
• Underline links to differentiate them from other text. Underlining the links ensures that color blind users will be able to notice them.

Hearing Impairments

Deafness or hearing impairment affects five percent of the population, 466 million people worldwide.[2] This number includes people born deaf and those who have lost auditory function due to age and damage to their hearing. Hearing loss can be very isolating, and hearing aids are often not effective. To allow all people to use your website, do one of the following:

• Include closed captioning for videos.
• Have a sign language version is available.

Seizure Disorders

1.2 percent of American adults—about 3.4 million—have epilepsy, a brain disorder that causes seizures.[3] Visual strobe or flashing effects can trigger photo epileptic seizures. While not all people with epilepsy are sensitive to flashing lights, about one in four thousand people are.[4]

• Avoid using flashing effects or at least make them optional.
• If you use flashing lights on your site, include a warning to prevent risk to users with photosensitive.

Cognitive and Intellectual Impairments

Cognitive and intellectual impairments include developmental disabilities, cognitive disabilities which affect memory, attention, problem-solving, and logic skills, and learning difficulties such as dyslexia and dyscalculia, etc.

• Write content in plain language.
• Include illustrations, instructional diagrams, and animations.
• Add a video that explains the content to offer one more way for users to learn.

Motor or Mobility Impairment

Motor or mobility impairment difficulty or inability to use the hands, tremors, muscle slowness, loss of fine motor control, etc. These impairments are often a result of stroke, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, etc.;

• Create large, clickable links to help people who cannot control a computer mouse with precision.
• Code pages to allow navigation by using a keyboard or a single switch access device alone so that users do not need to use a mouse or a standard keyboard.

Situational Disabilities

Accessibility issues extend to anyone who is experiencing a situational disability. Situational disability refers to someone who is having trouble using a website to its maximum functionality due to their current situation. For example, a person may be situationally one-handed if they are carrying a baby. While developing your website, be mindful of the wide variety of barriers users encounter.

Websites can be audited for accessibility using a range of methods. The expert developers at Iceberg Web Design can build a website from the ground up that is accessible for all your potential customers. We can also ensure that your current site is correctly built and maintained to accommodate all users. Contact us today to find out how we can help you.

[1] Babu, Rakesh, et al. “Understanding Blind Users’ Web Accessibility and Usability Problems.” AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 2, no. 3, 2010, pp. 73–94., doi:10.17705/1thci.00015.

[2] “Deafness and Hearing Loss.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 1 Mar. 2020, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-and-hearing-loss.

[3] “Epilepsy Fast Facts.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 31 July 2018, www.cdc.gov/epilepsy/about/fast-facts.htm?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fepilepsy%2Fbasics%2Ffast-facts.htm.

[4] “Information about Photosensitive Seizure Disorders.” Dr. Graham Harding, Information about Photosensitive Seizure Disorders | Trace Research &amp; Development Center, Trace Research and Development Center, 2016, trace.umd.edu/peat/photosensitivity.

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Good web design combines several components to create a mood and call to mind memories and associations. One of these components is typography.

Typography is the balance and interplay of letterforms on the page (or the screen).  It is a verbal and visual equation involving the meaning of the words with typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing, and letter-spacing. Today typesetting is seen virtually everywhere one encounters printed text. Newspapers and magazines utilize tighter typefaces that work well around pictures. Books often use typesetting with roots in previous generations. Introductory paragraphs as well as the first letter in an article or in the chapter of a book are set in different typefaces, fonts, and sizes to grab the reader’s attention. Let’s look at some typography trends that we will see more of in 2020.

Fonts, Modern Typography

The digital representation of a typeface is called a font. The word font comes from Middle French, fonte, meaning “something that has been melted; a casting.” This refers to the process of casting metal type at a type foundry. When creating a typeface, typographers will incorporate the specific letterforms with characteristics that change from one type design to another.

• Stroke weight – Weight refers to the relative thickness of a font’s stroke. Common classifications include light, regular, medium, and bold.
• The forms of serifs – A serif is a small shape or projection that appears at the beginning or end of a stroke of a letter. A typeface without serifs is called a sans serif typeface, from the French word “sans” that means “without.”
• Lengths of ascenders – Ascenders are an upward vertical stroke found in certain lowercase letters that extend beyond either the cap height or baseline. Examples include b, d, and h.
• Lengths of descenders – Descenders are the downward vertical stroke in these letters. Examples include g, j, and y.
• Counter shapes – A counter shape is an open space in a fully or partly closed area within a letter.
• The finial styles – The finial is a somewhat tapered curved end on letters such as the bottom of c or e. It’s a swash or ornamental flourish, much like an extended ascender, or descender. A finial is often added as a variation to some characters in a typeface.

Typography Trend: Massive Fonts

These are fonts that can be read from across the room. The key to best utilizing these is with the adage, “less is more.” Big, bold typography can become overwhelming when there is too much of it. After all, if everything is bold, then nothing stands out any longer. That’s the point of large and/or bold fonts. It is better to use these big, bold fonts only for short pieces of text or headers and subheaders. This site for Sherer Bros. Lumber is a great example of the way large fonts can be used.

Site: https://www.schererbros.com/

Typography Trend:  Contrasting fonts

Contrasting fonts add variety to a website. This website for Borton Overseas incorporates a hand-written font, which adds a voice to the site. “What are you waiting for?” It is also a wonderful example of using two contrasting fonts.

Site: https://www.bortonoverseas.com/

Typography Trend: Classic Serif

Serif fonts have a classic look. They are fonts that elicit a level of comfort and trust. This website for Neighborhood Greening, has a gorgeous serif font that matches the font of the journal.

Site: https://neighborhoodgreening.org/

Some things to keep in mind:

• Contrast is important. Heavy fonts have more impact on a neutral background.
• Readability is essential. If users can’t read the print, it won’t serve your needs.
• Sans Serif fonts scale well.

Our web designers know how to use fonts to meet the needs of your business. Give us a call to find out how we can best serve you!

The post Web Design Typography Trends for 2020 appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

“The 10,000 foot-view of these trends makes it clear that ‘web’ design looks more like traditional ‘graphic’ or ‘print’ design than ever.
The amount of flexibility that designers in being expressive and creatively nimble is astonishing compared to just five or ten years ago.”
–Khoi Vinh, Senior Director of Product Design at Adobe XD.[1]

A dominating grid of cards

Websites are commonly laid out on a grid. Grid web layouts are a direct descendent of the grids used in print layouts. They are consistent, regardless of the screen size on which it is reproduced, allowing them to work well with responsive designs. Read more about the history of the grid as an element of design. Grids can vary in size, spacing, and the number of columns.

Cards are the perfect companion for the grid layout. Cards are essentially containers for clickable information. The style of cards can vary based on screen size. Information heavy content can be arranged in bite-sized previews, which users can dive into by clicking or tapping the card. This is particularly useful on sites that display a lot of items with equal hierarchy (Think Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube).

Muted landscapes

These make beautiful heroes (the large banner area at the top of the website which takes up most of the screen). Popular with photographer’s websites, they are also well-utilized in travel and destination websites such as this site for Trail Breaker Kennel.

Geometric shapes and lines

Geometric shapes, lines (including fine lines), and patterns are making a comeback. Our all-star example of this is the creative innovation company 4000 More Creative. The logo alone includes all of it: Geometric shapes, Lines (including fine lines) and patterns. This site is also an excellent example of…

Trendy color schemes

Trendy color schemes like bright bold colors and retro color schemes are both big this year. Bold colors are used throughout the 4000 More Creative site, but their pineapple takes the upside-down cake.
Just for bonus points, 4000 More Creative uses a video hero, which we looked at last week.

Compatible Visual Design

The goal of visual design isn’t just to be trendy. It’s being compatible with the message of the website. That’s why the 4000 More Creative site can utilize extra creative elements. Trail Breaker Kennel and other destination type sites want to visually transport you. That takes something epic and mystical like a muted landscape. A dominating grid of cards is perfect for a paint store like Hirschfield’s. It evokes the feeling of looking at paint chips in a brick and mortar paint store.

Iceberg Web Design creates websites that are innovative in visual design and compatible with the message that their client wants to send. Contact us today to see how we can help you tell your story.

[1] Turner, Leigh. “10 Web Design Trends That Will Dominate Your Screen in 2020.” Fundamentals | The Next Web, 20 Dec. 2019, thenextweb.com/adobe-fundamentals/2019/12/20/10-web-design-trends-that-will-dominate-your-screen-in-2020/.

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Not a superhero—a website hero! A hero is the first thing a user encounters on the homepage of a website. It usually takes up most of the screen space and has a minimal amount of text with a call to action. Heroes are one of the biggest website trends of 2020.

There are many benefits to utilizing this space with a hero:

• The hero will generally be the first image your users will encounter on your site. Because of this, they can make an impactful first impression.
• Heroes set the stage for what users will associate with your business. Send a meaningful message.
• A hero graphic allows users to focus in on and connect with the most important message on your homepage, rather than allowing their attention to be distracted by multiple areas of competing content.
• Action heroes! Hero graphics are great for displaying a call to action.
• Heroes grab the user’s attention and encourage them to view more of your site.
•  Hero graphics are a flexible design element. You can use them to achieve the thing you want most from your web marketing. Is there a message you want to promote? Do you want to feature a new product? They can solidify your company’s image in your customer’s minds.

A hero isn’t perfect. Here are some of the flaws you may find:

• Most hero areas are very large, so they take up a lot of screen space. While this has the above-listed benefits, there are drawbacks to them when users need to find important information quickly. You certainly wouldn’t want a hero on an emergency services website.
• Heroes on responsive websites lose their impact on mobile devices. That’s a problem, since “Almost three quarters (72.6 percent) of internet users will access the web solely via their smartphones by 2025, equivalent to nearly 3.7 billion people.”[1]
• Large heroes=longer loading time. Consider that “a one-second delay in page load time has been shown to cause a 7 percent loss in conversion and 11 percent fewer page views.”[2]
• If your hero takes up the entire screen, it might be unclear to users that there is additional content below.
• It may not be clear to users that there is more content below the hero area.

Hero Trends for 2020

Trend: Big, beautiful, backgrounds.

A great example of this is the website we built for G’s Café. G’s is an Irish Café in historic, downtown Anoka, Minnesota. The hero reflects that. The best part is that every page has one of these background images that show the mouth-watering dishes served at G’s.

Trend: Text Only Heroes/Minimalism

Text only and minimalism is a huge trend in 2020. When we built the site for the information technology company,Tailwind, we utilized this concept. The duotone colors and elegant lines express the concept of information and data transfer. As you scroll down, you see the result of that: action.

Trend: Hero Video Headers

Right Turn Recruiting  Is a truck driver recruiting agency that’s “dedicated to 100% driver satisfaction.” The website that we created gets that message across from the moment you open the page. Professionalism and respect for the driver are expressed through a video hero. Video heroes capture the user’s attention and draw you into the message at the same time.

Trend: An Emotional Response from an Image

The site we created for the Animal Behavior Clinic of New Jersey is the perfect example of creating an emotional response with an image. If you are searching for help to modify your pet’s behavior this will grab you. Who wouldn’t love to see this in their pets? This image offers that hope.

Trend: Balance

A powerful image can balance a text-heavy website. That was our goal with the site we put together for Agility IRL. Agility IRL is a leadership training company. There is a lot that can be said about their service—so we say it. But, we also balance that out with beautiful images that express the goals of leadership training and coaching.

If you need a hero when it comes to putting together a powerful website contact us. We are web developers who answer the phone.

[1] Handley, Lucy. “Nearly Three-Quarters of the World Will Use Just Their Smartphones to Access the Internet by 2025.” CNBC, CNBC, 24 Jan. 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/smartphones-72percent-of-people-will-use-only-mobile-for-internet-by-2025.html.

[2] “What Is Page Load Time and Why Is It Important?” BigCommerce, 27 Feb. 2020, www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-answers/what-page-load-time-and-why-it-important/.

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