Visual Design

by Vahrmeijer |

Improving your use of color may open the door toward improving of the effectiveness of your site or portal. Our research shows that simple color-changes can improve click-through rates, registration numbers, and community activity.

This conclusion derives from research at LeerWiki.nl, a Dutch community for learning and earning. We have tested how different color schemes affect visitor behavior with regards to site goals, in order to optimize the use of color. This article outlines our research process and results.

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by erika |

One Saturday afternoon, I agreed to take my daughter to the AT&T store, just to LOOK at an iPhone... touch one... explore a little. MISTAKE. I should have duct-taped myself to the mast — and my wallet to my ass — because next thing I knew (after daughter demoed it as expertly as if she'd been using it all her life) we were walking out of the store with a brand new iPhone 3G. You'll love our coverage, the AT&T salesman assured as he packed the phone into a bag, only for us to discover upon arriving home that we had no reception within a quarter mile of our house.

Dang! I thought, now we have to move.

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by Brad Henry | How do you know if you should invest more time and money into creating a killer design? This case study examines how the look and feel of the site can impact your overall conversion rate which can provide justification for a little more investment. View the old site, compare it to the new site and review the conversion metrics that shows the before and after conversion rates. Read More »

by MartinB |

Over the years, evolt.org has had a number of designs, produced and implemented by a small group of admin evolters. We've come a long way in developing the design in the 7 years we've been in existence, including this current iteration, which we've lived with for over 6 months since we replatformed the site last summer. In that time, we've progressively opened up the running of the community. But now we'd like to go a step further and open up the design too. Here's your opportunity to stamp your own creativity on evolt - we'd like you (yes, you) to redesign this site.

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by codepo8 | Your site navigation is what helps the visitors to find your content. Don't make it a technical portfolio but a helper tool. This article shows how the simplicity of real life navigational helpers can be applied to the web. Read More »

by ThomH | We all know that color can make or break a site. But beyond eye candy appeal, color choices also impact usability and accessibility. This can impact up to 1 in 12 people, roughly 8% of a site's potential audience. The solution is not to use only boring colors or do only simple designs. In contrast, by understanding better the relationship between color and accessibility, the designer can make inspired and creative choices for the multi-device Internet. Read More »

by ideahamster | Looking for a means to judge the quality of web design? A good place to start is with the US Federal Government, which provides more than 175 research-based guidelines. Read More »

by ideahamster | Even in the digital age, pen and paper play a critical role in creating an effective web site. Read More »

by notabene | With the expanding support for PNG in modern browsers, Internet Explorer's lack of support has become increasingly frustrating. Here is a way to try to bypass its limitation without javascript: PNG for recent browsers, GIF for the others. Read More »

by hgquinn | In this second article about Margaret Livingstone's Where and What vision systems, theory is put into practice. A real world design problem is analyzed and resolved using an understanding of how these two distinct vision systems work. Read More »