You feel you have done everything right on your website. The copy looks compelling. The design looks magnificent. But still, visitors are not spending as much time on your website as much as you want them to. You have little to no clue about why it is happening and how to fix it. You try out a bunch of SEO tools, you undergo usability testing, but still, no significant improvements can be seen.

You feel tired and reluctant to try out more SEO tools and do more testing. You still have no clue why visitors are abandoning your well-designed information-rich website. You feel like talking to your visitors to understand what’s wrong, but how is that even possible? They certainly are in no mood to fill out a form on an exit popup or converse with your chatbot before leaving the website. The users that abandoned your website must have experienced issues you were not aware of.

Using a Real User Monitoring Tool

So, what’s next? With the attention span of people decreasing day by day, solving this problem for which you do not even know the root cause is imperative. Here’s how you can understand what’s going on. Try integrating your website with a real user monitoring tool.

Real user monitoring, an approach to web monitoring, is a type of performance monitoring that captures and analyzes every transaction of the user. It is a form of passive web monitoring because the monitoring services run in the background. There’s another type of web monitoring known as synthetic monitoring. In synthetic monitoring, the monitoring scripts are deployed via the browser to simulate paths that website users take.

Real user monitoring technology looks at how visitors interact with a website or an application. Real user monitoring tools enhance the front-end performance of your website by analyzing data to detect anomalies from real user sessions thereby increasing customer satisfaction. These tools can also send you alerts in real-time. Using these tools, you can get to know the exact underlying issues concerning your website. 

A real user monitoring tool like Sematext Experience is easy to use. It alerts you when user experience gets affected by website performance. You can inspect page-level specifics, track page loads, HTTP requests, UI interactions, resources, and more. Using such a tool, you can reduce performance-related issues by having 100% visibility into what areas are affecting UX.

How Real User Monitoring Improves SEO?

Real user monitoring lets you know the problematic areas on your website which could be affecting user performance. Here’s how such a tool can help in improving SEO.

Improving Page Loading Time

Google indicates that the loading time of web pages is a signal used by its algorithm to rank them. Google could be measuring the time taken to receive the first byte while calculating page speed. A poorly performing website degrades the user experience. Hence, such sites do not deserve to be promoted in search results.

Time-to-first-byte (TTFB) is the time taken by the browser to receive the first byte from a web server when a URL is requested. This metric includes the time taken to send a response, the processing time of the server, and the time taken by the first byte to reach your browser from the server. Here’s a graph of median TTFB vs ranking positions:

Source – https://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking

Sematext Experience collects resource timing data for images, CSS, and JavaScript files. When someone visits your website, the browser begins downloading resources. These resources have a big impact on your website’s loading speed.

The resources are shown in the form of a waterfall ordered by the time they were discovered.

Resource Waterfall – Sematext Experience 

Load-time performance depends on various factors. If visitors experience slow page-loads or poor HTTP request performance, it is most likely caused by network latency, DNS servers, redirects, application performance, and other factors. A detailed timing breakdown on page loads and HTTP requests is displayed to understand which part(s) of the loading process is slow. 

Timing Breakdown – Sematext Performance

We can only optimize what we can measure. Once you have information on the resources which are slow-loading, you can start improving their load times. As SEO is impacted by loading time, here’s a list of tasks you can do to optimize your web pages for better SEO:

• Reduce the dimensions of images to fit the image containers on your web pages.
• Compress images to further reduce the space they occupy on your server.
• Stick to standard image formats (JPG, PNG, GIF).
• Use CSS sprites for images that you use frequently on your website like icons and buttons. A CSS sprite loads entirely in one go thereby reducing the number of HTTP requests. This technique helps in saving load time by not making users wait for multiple images to load.
• Reduce the size of your HTML, CSS, and Javascript files using a minification tool.
• Remove code comments, formatting, and unused code to reduce the size of the files.
• Reduce the number of redirects to avoid additional waiting time.
• Move scripts to the Footer to avoid render-blocking javascript code.
• Use browser caching so the browser doesn’t have to reload the entire page when a visitor comes back to your site. Browsers can cache images, stylesheets, Javascript files, and more. Learn how to leverage browser caching here.
• Improve the server response time by looking out for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries and routing. Try switching to a new hosting solution to further improve the server response time. The optimal response time is under 200 ms.
• Use a content distribution network (CDN) which essentially distributes the load of delivering content. It works as follows – copies of your website are stored at multiple data centers located geographically so that users have faster and reliable access to your website.

Improving User Satisfaction

The more the users are satisfied with your website experience, the more likely they will spend a lot more time on your website which in turn will help in improving SEO as time spent on the website directly affects your search engine rankings. Naturally, we want the average time spent on your website to be as high as possible for Google to take note of the importance of your website. 

On the other hand, if users are dissatisfied with your website experience, they are more likely to abandon your website which eventually will lead to an increase in the bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who abandon your website after visiting a single page. A high bounce rate means that visitors don’t like what they see on your website. We want to have the bounce rate as low as possible to have better rankings.

You learned how time spent on the website and the bounce rate impacts the rankings for your website. A real user monitoring tool like Sematext gives a measure of user satisfaction. 

User Experience – Sematext Experience

The user satisfaction score is based on the Apdex industry standard. Page loads, on-page transactions, and ajax requests are separated into different user satisfaction scores as they have different performance characteristics.

Conclusion

As 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine and 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search (source), it is important to improve the SEO of your website for better rankings. The fact is that there could be issues concerning your website which you might not even be aware of. These issues could secretly be affecting the user experience thereby making visitors abandon your website. You need real user monitoring tools to know these issues to improve your website rankings. Do research regarding which real user monitoring tool is good for you – one that fits your use case. The important part is to monitor the end-user experience and be in control of how users interact with your website.

When you’re a freelancer and you start to work directly with your clients, there’s something crucial you need to know.

Your design is not the one and only, most important aspect of the transaction.

While presenting your client with an amazing design is the final goal, there are a lot of other things at stake that could make or break your business deal.

There are 7 things that could potentially ruin any partnership with a client, and they have nothing to do with your design style.

7 Biggest Mistakes Freelance Designers Make And How To Avoid Making Them

I don’t want you to have to make the same mistakes I’ve made when I was a beginner freelancer.

Today, I want to learn from my mistakes and avoid these 7 deadly sins of freelance graphic designers.

1. Poor Communication Skills

Poor communication is the biggest bummer of all the freelance design mistakes that you could make.

Everything you do and the way you’re going to make your client feel is all going to come back to how well you communicate with your client.

Now, communication is a two-way street.

If you and your client don’t communicate exactly what they’re looking for and what you’re capable of doing, then you’re going to find yourself working all-nighters to revise mistakes that could’ve easily been avoided had you communicated.

Some clients are angels, and some are the opposite.

Some clients will verbalize exactly what they’re looking for, and others will give you the vaguest idea of what they want and let you try to figure it out, which sometimes is a blessing, and others, a curse.

One way you can avoid poor communication is by creating a list of basic questions you want to ask each of your clients, regarding their expectations of what your design will be.

Decide what platform you’ll be communicating through and make sure you set hours you will be readily available to discuss changes and set your notification to loud so you never miss a beat.

If you ever feel like a client is being rude, take a deep breath, decide whether you’ll continue working with them or not, then write them a calm message. Remember: things on the internet last forever! Don’t let one snooty client ruin your reputation.

2. Limited Number of Revisions

Nothing is worse than thinking you finally finished a design that you’re happy with and proud of, you just presented it to your client, and they don’t love it.

They want you to revise it.

The number of times you agree to revise your project is something you will need to have discussed beforehand.

Not everyone will be on the same wavelength, so it’s important you decide how many times you will change the final version of your design, and what you will charge if they ask for supplementary changes.

And what do you know it, this all leads back to good communication.

Don’t let people walk all over you, but also don’t be so prideful you won’t make any changes. It’s a beautiful and delicate balance.

3. Not Fulfilling Client’s Needs

Speaking of being prideful, sometimes, you have to suck it up and make a design that you’re not completely proud of.

Lots of clients have complained that some designers they worked with only had themselves in mind when creating their design.

Needs and requests were not met, therefore leading to awful conflict and probably bad word of mouth followed shortly after that.

Try to sus out the vibe of what your client is looking for and see if the style aligns with yours. If it does, awesome!

If it doesn’t, decide whether or not you’re going to do the work anyway and get that coin, or whether to respectfully decline the offer to work with them.

4. Missing The Deadline

When you’re your own boss, it’s easy to get behind and have no “work anxiety” or drive to finish your work on time.

But a good reputation is crucial and constantly missing deadlines is a terrible way to do things.

Set up a deadline that you really think you can make.

Don’t think your Superman or Superwoman, and can handle 10 projects that are all due by next week.

Take on what you know you can handle, and discuss that with your client.

Everyone understands a pushback here and there, but don’t make that a habit.

People might eventually perceive you as lazy, and that’s not what we’re going for here.

5. Mispriced Work

Listen, you gotta know your worth.

In saying this, you should know how much to charge.

Don’t undersell yourself, because you’re the bomb!

But don’t overcharge either, because people don’t like it when someone takes advantage of them.

Give them a quote, and negotiate from there.

6. Not Making Clients Feel Like a Priority

No one likes to feel unimportant.

And maybe you’re not making your clients feel unimportant intentionally.

Sometimes, we all take on more than we can handle.

But if your clients don’t feel like a priority, they might cut your work contract short, or choose not to work with you again in the future.

This mistake goes hand-in-hand with missing deadlines. You can’t take on so much that you will make people feel unimportant.

Everyone wants to feel heard and important, and some companies or clients are cut-throat and won’t work with you again if you don’t make them feel like they’re important to you.

Do your best to make your clients know they’re important to you and you’re doing your best.

Communication, communication, communication.

7. Wasting Time

The final thing I want to talk about is wasting time.

When you work from home, it’s easy to get distracted.

Blame it on your pets or a messy kitchen, and then suddenly you’re 5 hours behind schedule and things are getting out of hand.

I have a whole list of things you can do to stay productive while working from home that will help you stay on top of your A-game.

Make sure you make a good schedule for yourself, one that works for you.

Don’t waste too much time on things that don’t matter. The dishes can wait. Or maybe, they can’t. You should definitely have a clean workspace. But right after that, get back to work!

Wrapping up

Everything is a learning curve, and while you start working from home, take advantage of all the freedom that comes with that, but make a good name for yourself and do your best.

What other giant mistakes do you think designers make that we should cover?

Let us know in the comments.

Until next time,

Stay creative, folks!

Google Image Search has millions of users.

In fact, nearly a quarter of all Google search queries return an image. Visual search on multiple online channels will also continue to grow.

Just look at how social media has shifted from text to images and videos.

Using more images is a very clear call to action for businesses looking to drive more traffic to their websites.

“Images play an important role in your website design,” Garry Grant, CEO of a global SEO services company explained. “They allow your business to capitalize on more keywords while increasing total online visibility.”

However, optimizing images is no simple endeavor. There are a few ins-and-outs you will need to know and leverage.

For instance, those free stock photos you can get from sites like Pexels or Pixabay may not drive the traffic you want from Google Images.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t use them, because they still serve a purpose. But designing your own images may have better Google Images results.

Let’s take a closer look at a few ways to optimize your design for Google Images.

1. Image Filenames Are Important

Image optimization actually begins before you even upload an image to your website during the site design process.

This is where adding a strong filename to your image makes an impact on your Google Images visibility. 

The image itself, or text within the image is not read by Google crawlers (as far as we SEO professionals know). This means you want to give Google as much information as possible using the image filename.

To optimize this process, you want to think like a user. What would you type into the Google search bar to find your image.

This includes keywords, action happening in the image itself, and more. 

For example, if it is a construction worker at a job site, your image filename could be this: commercial-construction-worker-job-site-inspection.

2. Optimizing Images During Website Design

With a strong filename, you are ready to upload the image to your website during the design process. This is an essential point when it comes to optimizing design for Google Images.

If you are using a CMS like WordPress, you will notice a number of image attributes you can enter once you upload an image. These include title, alt text, and description.

All of these are important to optimizing website design for Google Images, but alt text, also known as alt tag, remains the most valuable for SEO.

The alt text gives you the opportunity to describe the image in more detail. You can put the same text as your image filename, or you can do a bit of variation. It is up to you.

Just be sure to fill in that alt text to get maximum search visibility for your website images.

3. Ensure Website Images Are Compressed

This is a very important way to optimize your design for Google Images. You can have the right filename, perfect alt text, but if your image is slow to load, it can do more damage to your website design than good. 

For example, if you upload an original design image that is 4000px, it will surely increase the load time for the page that image is on.

Google will also flag it and not show the image in Google Image Search results.

How do you ensure this doesn’t happen during your site design process? First, you want to upload an image that is the size you need. Not larger. Then you want to compress it.

You can use WordPress plugins like Smush to compress your image and optimize it.

4. Add Top Images To Your Website’s Sitemap

This way to optimize your design for Google Images is a lesser-known tactic. You may have already indexed the pages of your website, but what about the images?

Image sitemaps work the same way as page indexing, only they highlight the images you want Google to focus on.

For instance, a few of your homepage images are probably top on your list, so you will index them along with a few other images from other pages using an image sitemap.

You will only want to index your top images, because doing all is not going to have a major impact on your Google Image Search results.

Wrapping Up . . . 

The above ways to optimize your design for Google Images is not the be-all, end-all by any means. However, the above are a quick roadmap to optimizing your site’s images for maximum effect.

Pay close attention to filenames, alt text, and image compression, as these are what many SEOs believe Google looks for. Do you have an image optimization tactic?

For a lot of people, the first thing they think of when they hear the names of big companies is their logo. In truth, the logo is probably the biggest marketing decision you can make. It might sound simple, but there are quite a few things you need to keep in mind when designing a logo of your own. So without further ado, let’s talk about the basics behind designing your own logo.

Why do you need a logo?

Ideally, you’ll want to hire a professional to create your logo, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bring some ideas of your own to the table. In fact, it’s best that you have a pretty good idea of what you want before the big design meeting. 

But let’s say that you want to go through most, if not all of this process by yourself. Where do you even begin? You need to start this journey off by understanding why you need the logo.

Your logo is an extension of your brand. It’s important that it represents you. That can be hard to do in a single picture, but that’s why this takes time. 

Pick something that scales as a favicon

A favicon is that little image that sits in the address bar when a tab is opened. It’s a small detail, but it’s very crucial.

The reason it’s so crucial is because those big, fancy, and incredibly detailed images will look absolutely terrible as a favicon. This is something that a lot of people don’t think about because they generally regard a big and fancy logo as perfect. 

One of my favorite examples of a favicon is that of Mailchimp.

This logo is simple, yes, but it still manages to capture the brand perfectly. Now, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that the main focus of the logo (the chimp) is its own entity. That makes it very easy to scale as a favicon. Just like this:

This is the Mailchimp favicon. They definitely couldn’t have put the entire logo in the address tab, and they knew that. So, they went into the logo design process with that in mind, and came out with this.

Test multiple colors

Speaking of being scalable, you want to make sure the logo looks good on multiple backgrounds in multiple colors. If you don’t you could end up having to redo this entire process when something as simple as a WordPress theme change comes up.

A good example of this would be Slack

As unusual and controversial as the Slack logo has been here lately, we all have to admit that  it works well with multiple colors. Of course, the logo itself has a variety of colors in it, but that really only helps it.

The Slack logo can be seen around the world with all sorts of background and font colors. It’s an iconic logo, so it was important that they got all the design elements right.

Be consistent with the brand

A logo means nothing if it doesn’t embody the brand. This is especially important for startups that are looking to get their name out there. 

I don’t think I need to go into this too much, but we definitely need to mention it here. Every tiny little detail is crucial. They have to match the brand’s story, their tone of voice, and their mission.

So, for example, the choice of font is a big one. If you run a SaaS company, you probably don’t want to use a script font. Something like that makes much for sense for a small town candle shop.

Something like this classy lemonade stand logo is perfect. It’s simple, it will scale well as a favicon, and it’s on brand. The colors work well and the font stands out, but it’s not over the top.

Make your logo easy to incorporate into your brand

This point sort of goes along to the one above, but it deserves its own mention. That being said, even if your logo is on brand, it doesn’t mean that it will be easy to incorporate into the rest of your brand.

What do I mean by that? Well, looks aren’t always everything. Even if you logo looks great and embodies your brand, it might not be easy to use. Yes, there is such a thing as a logo that is too detailed to use.

A logo should not be so complicated that it takes more than a few seconds for someone to recognize what it is. If it’s simple and straightforward, it will be easy to incorporate into your brand anywhere.

Other tips to follow

There are tons of tips to take into consideration here. But, whether you’re designing it yourself or paying someone else to do it, there are some that are pretty fundamental. So, in addition to the ones above, here are some quick tips that you should consider:

• Pick a style and stick to it

Just like a good party, a logo has a theme. This is a combination of all the elements. From the typography to the colors, everything should be perfectly thought out and implemented with a purpose. Each element needs to pay respect to the others.

• Keep constant communication with the designer

If you choose to hire someone, you have to keep constant communication with them. In the design world, you build off of your own ideas. So if the designer gets one tiny detail wrong, then the entire logo can be off in the end.

• Stay inspired

You are designing the face of your company. If you lack inspiration in the project, you should stop and brainstorm a bit. Or, if you really can’t handle it anymore, step away for a bit. Nothing is worse than rushed work in design, so don’t make your logo suffer.

• Get a lot of opinions

You’re not designing this logo for your own personal use. This logo will be seen by a lot of people, so get a lot of opinions. Show it off to colleagues, friends, family, or even random strangers. The more input you can get, the better your logo will come out.

Be yourself

This is probably the most important rule in design, so we’ll end here. Being yourself is what got you to the place where you can design your own logo in the first place. Don’t fall into the norms of the industry that you’re in. Be unique!

If you want to increase ROI from your website, you can go about it in two ways: increase traffic or increase conversions.

It is much easier to increase conversions, however. Depending on what you do, it costs little to nothing to increase conversions and the resulting increase can have a compounding effect. The best way to increase conversions, by far, is by tinkering with your design; if done the right away, there are design hacks that can give your conversions an immediate boost.

Simple actions like tweaking the color of your CTA, tinkering with the default option in your design, and literally using a “compromise” can go a long way to boost your conversions. Below are five design hacks guaranteed to boost your website conversions:

1. When Designing CTAs, Always Make Sure They Contrast WithYour Site’s Color Scheme

When designing a page, it is important to realize that there’s no one-size-fits-all format or color for a CTA. You might have read one of those articles in which a CTA was successful because it uses the color red, or the color green, or the color blue, or any other “special” color. More often than not, these articles are missing a key fact: the CTA worked because it contrasted with the site’s color scheme.

Take a look at the following example from one of the most popular case studies on CTA design:

The study concluded that the red CTA outperformed the green CTA, and as such red “beats” green! When you pay careful attention, however, you realize that the color scheme of the page used the color green. As such, the color green will blend in while the color red will stand out — making the color red more likely to convert. This is in line with a principle of psychology known as “sensory adaptation.”

When designing CTAs, make sure your CTAs use an entirely different color that contrasts with the actual color scheme of your page. When you do this, your CTA will stand out and become more noticeable, and your conversions will improve.

2. Use The Bandwagon Effect to Indicate that You Are Popular

The “bandwagon effect” occurs when there is mass embrace of an idea that might ordinarily have been ignored due to the fact that a lot of other people are doing it. When this effect comes into place, it doesn’t really matter whether people agree with the idea — they are going to subscribe to it simply because a lot of other people are doing so.

There have been several mainstream examples of the bandwagon effect, including the hit K-Pop music video Gangnam Style. Even though the video originated from South Korea, it quickly became such a big hit and was on everybody’s lips; people were singing in Africa, Asia, and all over the world, regardless of whether they liked pop or South Korean music. Everybody began to sing it to appear cool and socially relevant, and it quickly became the first Youtube video to reach 1 billion views.

Then there’s also the popular yanny or laurel audio clip that trended and pretty much broke the Internet.

That’s the bandwagon effect in action. People join not because they are interested in a concept or agree with it. They join because a lot of other people are involved.

There are many ways you can integrate the bandwagon effect into your design to boost conversions:

1. Highlight major media mentions/industry recognitions above the fold of your design. The following screenshot shows an example from Website Setup.

The “Mentioned on” section features prominently on the homepage and communicates that top publications like Forbes, wikiHow, Entrepreneur, and Moz (individually read by millions) have endorsed the website. That automatically communicates popularity, and makes people more likely to follow.

2. Showcase key metrics (subscriber count, traffic figure, sales, or other important metric). The following example from Problogger shows how that works. As a blogger looking for a blogging community to join, realizing that over 300,000 bloggers are in a community makes it a lot more attractive.

3. Leverage the Default Effect to Boost Sales and Conversions

One of the most powerful design hacks you can leverage to boost conversions is the default effect. The default effect refers to people’s tendency to reflexively go with the default choice, and so many studies have shown just how powerful this can be.

In a particular experiment, Walt Disney found that by changing the default choices in kid’s meals to swap out soda for juice and french fries for fruits and vegetables, it was able to automatically result in kids consuming 21 percent fewer calories and 44 percent less fat. Vanguard was also able to double participation in employee retirement plans by opting people in for the plans by default and giving them an option to opt out rather than opting them out by default and requiring them to opt in.

How can this be used in your design?

Checkboxes, form fields descriptions, and placeholder content can be effectively used in such a way that what you really want people to do is included by default — and they have to take an extra step to opt out if they are not interested, rather than being opted out by default you having to prompt them to opt in.

4. Understand the Power of the Middle/Compromise Option in Web Design

When given extreme options, many people are likely to go for an intermediate option or what they feel is a compromise between two options.

For example, if given three packages with the costs below:

• $100
• $50
• $10

Many people will go for the middle option (the $50 option) instead of the cheapest or the most expensive. This is known as the “compromise effect.” To really leverage this effect to boost your conversions, you can take the compromise effect not just figuratively but also literally. The below example is courtesy of Aha!.

As you can see, the middle option isn’t just a compromise between the two extremes, it is also specially designed and highlighted in a way that it sticks out.

When designing pricing pages and options for people, you want to design the option you really want people to select such that it is literally placed in the middle. Not only does this draw more attention to it, but it draws special focus on it as a clear compromise between the other options and as a result makes people more likely to select.

5. Optimize Your Design For Speed

In an age of rapidly declining attention spans, it goes without saying that every design changes should be made with speed in mind.

Here are some key facts you want to take note of:

• A simple one second delay in how long it takes for your design to load can make conversions to suffer. Even longer delays will be more detrimental.
• Search engines use a page’s speed as one of the major factors when determining how to rank it.
• 47 percent of people expect a web page to load within 2 seconds.
• 40 percent of people will abandon a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

In essence, speed shouldn’t be a compromise when making design changes. Rather, actions taken to optimize your design for speed in and of itself can go a long way to boost your conversions.

Ayodeji Onbalusi is the founder of digital marketing agency Effective Inbound Marketing and online reputation management agency BoostMyMedia.com. He’s an experienced content marketing strategist and can be reached via LinkedIn.

Seeing all the time, effort, emojis, drawings, and true works of art put into an Insta story, we know for sure stories are not what they once were. They’re no longer just pictures and videos shot in real-time. Stories have become a true marketing platform, with intensely strategic moves behind each piece of content published. Every Insta story most likely has a cool (maybe expensive) story app that was used to produce the content.  

With Insta stories looking more polished and aesthetically pleasing than ever, as a designer, you have to be on top of your game. But to what end and to what cost? 

I’m here to help you save a good buck. I’ve got the 10 best free Insta story apps for you to use to improve your Insta stories game without breaking the bank. Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

10 Best Free Insta Story Apps

1. Unfold

Unfold is an amazing Insta story app that is free, but also has in-app purchases if you fancy a certain look and template theme. With many texts and elements to choose from, and themes spanning from elegant or retro, there’s something for everyone.

Try it out today for free: https://unfoldstori.es/

2. Jane

A very underappreciated and not talked about enough app, in my opinion, is Jane. The app is free and has very many free beautiful templates for you to use to spice up your stories. They are quite girly and are perfect for maintaining an elegant or playful story vibe. Create amazing videos with royalty-free music and amazing visuals. Again, this app is free but has in-app purchases. 

Try it out free today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/%E7%AE%80%E6%8B%BC-jane/id891640660

3. Canva

Canva is hands-down one of the best online CMP’s out there. It’s great for beginner and advanced designers alike. With tons of templates to choose from and customize, you’ll surely find the one that suits your style best. The mobile app is free and has in-app purchases, although you can totally rock with all the free elements and templates and just tune them to your liking.

Try out this app out for free today:https://www.canva.com/app/

4. Hype Type

With a vast and wide collection of fonts, you can do some serious designing with this app. Hype type is absolutely killing the font game. If you’re focused on spreading a message, then this is absolutely the app for you. The app is free with some paid features, but it’s up to you to decide if they’re a necessary buy. 

Check out their app now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hype-type-moving-text-photo-s/id1152687277

5. Cut Story

Another great app for managing your stories is Cut Story. Cut Story’s is an amazing video editing app where you can create engaging videos and add music, texts, elements, your logo and more to your video. There are special features that you can buy to enhance your UX, but only if you deem necessary.

Try out their free Insta story app now:https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cutstory-for-instagram-stories/id917630934

6. Mojo Story Maker

Mojo is the way to go for Insta stories because they have 100 templates for you to choose from! Customize your stories with text to create relevance, engage with your followers and make them feel what you feel, and share the message you want to portray with them. A huge plus to this app is that you can share your new and improved story directly to your Instagram and also your Snapchat!

Try this Insta story app now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mojo-stories-editor/id1434861974

7. InShot

For all my influencers out here, Inshot is the app for you. We don’t always have time to film, import, and edit our footage on our laptops or computers, so having this app will be a valuable asset for you. Edit all your video content in a single app on your phone and import it directly to your Instagram. This app is truly a gift to all of us creators out there.

Give it a try if you haven’t already: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.camerasideas.instashot&hl=en 

8. Adobe Spark Post

Adobe, king of all things editing programs, in my own personal opinion. Adobe has great editing programs, from video-editing to photoshopping images, and when they saw an opportunity to create an app to help you create amazing stories to tell your followers, well, we all know they wouldn’t pass that up. With this app you can do more than edit stories photos, you can also edit video and image posts. The app is initially free and then they offer you the chance to upgrade if you end up falling in love with the app.

Go ahead and give this Insta story maker a go: https://spark.adobe.com/features 

10. Over

And last, but not least, we have the app called Over. I love that when you visit their webpage, it’s just absolutely inspiring. It inspires you to be different, to stand out, the influence others. A great app for you to use to for free to make your Insta stories more engaging for your followers and for you to really create a brand name and grow your recognizability.

Stand out of the crowd and try this amazing app free today: https://www.madewithover.com/

Now that you have 10 new and fresh apps for you to choose from to start stepping up your Insta story game, it’s time for you to hop on it. Download any one of these apps and tag us in any of your Instagram stories for a chance to be featured on our stories. Our Instagram handle is @webdesignledger.

Don’t sleep on these amazing free Insta story apps! Try them out today. 

Until next time, 

Stay creative.

The Right Pairs of Fonts Are Like Peas in a Pod

When fonts are matched together correctly, they really make the perfect pair. Pairs are everywhere around us – our socks, best friend, partner, peanut butter and jelly, and the list could go on. 

Thinking about fonts without thinking about font pairs is half the concept. After all, we’re all better in pairs, and there’s no exception with fonts. When a font is paired with a good partner, the original font is enhanced, and your ultimate design goal is accomplished. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though.

The key to picking font pairs is to start with the correct font. Sounds simple, enough. When you think about choosing a font, what comes to mind? 

The style and overall design of the project, or rather, the appearance of the words? You aren’t incorrect, yet you’re also not completely correct. Choosing a font has so many layers and complexities to the process, but we’ll map it out for you. First, let’s define the goal of a font.

Change Your Mindset

Fonts are constantly advertised and viewed as just a last minute design. When changing the font for a school paper, or a company proposal, you may not put much thought into the font you change your text to. 

Yet, fonts can add credibility to your content, make content more readable, present content for better conversions, and market your information to evoke feelings within your readers, which ultimately increases sales. 

Sometimes it’s the little changes that matter the most! The beauty and challenge with fonts are that they’re always displayed. 

Meaning, if your font is hard to read, then readers will just click away onto another website with much more readable fonts. The competition is higher than ever to get website visitors on your page and staying – don’t make your font the reason they click away. 

The Goal of the Font: Convey the Message

Although fonts do project a style and design, their main goal is to translate the marketing message. Think about it, without a font, your message wouldn’t be conveyed at all! They are the vehicle that translates the words you want your target audience to read. It doesn’t end there. A font translates much more than the physical message. 

You’re also communicating a feeling. Think about why we dress up for an interview or an important business meeting. We’re communicating an image without saying anything. That image is backed behind emotions. 

If the stakes are high like a proposal meeting, then perhaps you’d dress in business professional in order to seem credible. Think about selling a home. Why did you trust one realtor over the other to work with? 

Sometimes overdressing can separate yourself from your audience rather than associate yourself with them or seem trustworthy to your audience. If you’re aware your price range is on the lower side, you may feel intimidated and unsettled if your realtor is overdressed because they may not understand your situation.

Choosing the correct message to portray to your audience is a challenge within itself, but most likely if you have a marketing campaign, you already know this! If you’re a bank, you want to come across as trustworthy. 

If you’re a rolling skating arena, you want to appear fun. Finding it hard to see which feeling your business is trying to embody? Think of what emotions your business wouldn’t want customers to associate you with.

Serifs and Sans Serifs

Once you’ve come up with this message, you’re halfway there. Choosing a font is merely finding a style that represents this. Be aware of the different styles of fonts like serifs and sans serif fonts. This could be an easy deciding factor that could narrow down your search! Generally, serif fonts have a traditional style. 

These are the fonts that have the little feet at the end of each character. Sans serif fonts were invented after, and are usually considered a much more modern font. These fonts, not containing the feet at the end of each character, display well on digital screens. Upon picking a serif or sans serif font, experiment with the font against your design and how the font is described online. 

Serifs and sans serif fonts pair extremely well together because they have what the partner doesn’t! 

A great example of this is April Fatface and Roboto. Abril Fatface takes the spotlight, while Roboto takes a backseat, with its simple lines and versatile design. 

Another great example is Dancing Script and Josefin Sans. Both fonts have a similar delicate design that looks handwritten. Yet, Dancing Script could only be displayed on headlines or else it would overwhelm the readers, and Josefin Sans effortlessly simple. 

Finding Your Font’s Perfect Pair

Once you’ve got a font or an idea of a font you’re looking for, it might be time to use a font combination tool. These are great because they make the pairing process much smoother. If you have no idea where to start or aren’t into design, a font combination tool, like this one by Bold Web Design Adelaide, is a great place to find inspiration or start to realize what you like and don’t like in a font. 

Think of pairing fonts like music. There’s a melody and a harmony. One takes precedent: the melody. Without both, the music would feel incredibly empty. It may seem like the melody is more important, and it may relay the main message, but both are needed to make a song. They define each other, as without the melody the support music wouldn’t be called harmony and vice versa.

Pairing fonts is exactly like the melody and harmony in a song. One is the focal point that shines through, which I like to call the focal font. This is the font that usually has more personality, and is used for headlines or larger text. With two focal fonts, your reader would be incredibly overwhelmed when reading through your information. 

Pairing fonts is a balancing act, requiring both fonts to work together and not to take up too much attention from your readers. Secondly, both fonts have to be compatible. This relays back to your marketing messaging. You wouldn’t release a marketing campaign with one ad that’s creative and fun, and another that’s scary and serious. Ensure both fonts align with the message and emotion, and compliment each other. 

Pairing fonts is a great way to differentiate information from each other. Just as we section content within an article with headers and subheaders, different fonts can be used for the headers and paragraphs to further associate a transition within the content. 

Text that you want to stand out can be placed in a standout font, and support with a much simpler font. Even the weights of fonts within a pair can be changed, making a font bold, thin, italicized, and other variations to increase its versatility. The possibilities are truly endless. 

Play around and get familiar with the options out there. Once you’ve accomplished this, pairing fonts is a piece of cake. Your fonts will work together like a seamless song.

What Not to Do 

Don’t choose a font blindly. Picking the correct font for your business takes awareness and understanding. A font that works for another company, may not work for yours. Rather than looking at fonts as a design decision, think of it as a sales decision. 

If you’re just picking a random font from a list without much consideration, you could be throwing away potential leads to your products and services without even knowing. Within the age of digital content galore, you want to set yourself apart from the rest. 

A font is the puzzle piece to a unique brand identity and a competitive edge! Don’t put two loud fonts together. A font that definitely has a “personality” should not be paired with another font like it. 

Find a versatile font to pair with loud fonts or pair two versatile fonts together. Versatile fonts are simple and readable like Arial or Roboto. 

Conclusion 

At the end of the day, a font can always be changed if not now, later. Test different fonts and see which ones work well for your company’s design. If you’re working with print materials, print a couple of tests and get your team’s vote. 

A design is just an extension of the company, design, and culture. What better way to decide if it’s a great fit than to ask the ones that work there. When you see a good font pairing, it will seem effortless and you won’t be looking at the fonts, you’ll be reading the content. 

The fonts will balance each other out – working together to differentiate between text and information. After all, the right font pairs are like two peas in a pod.