website design Archives | xVS Creations

May 9, 2023 BrandingDesign by Sanjeev 0 Comments

Kickstart designing for your brand on a budget.

Starting a business in today’s world is more accessible than ever. With the rise of e-commerce, social media marketing, and remote work, entrepreneurs have more opportunities to build a brand on a budget. However, designing your brand on a budget can be a challenge. In this blog post, we’ll explore some tips and tricks for creating a compelling brand identity without breaking the bank.

1- Focus on Your Brand You Want to Build

The first step to designing your brand on a budget is to focus on your brand identity. What is your mission statement? Who is your target audience? What sets your brand apart from your competitors? By answering these questions, you can identify the key values and messages that you want to convey through your brand identity.

Your brand identity should be consistent across all your marketing materials, from your website to your social media channels. By building a cohesive brand identity, you’ll create a memorable and recognizable image that will resonate with your target audience.

2- Design a Logo

Your logo is the face of your brand. It’s the first thing that customers will see, and it’s what they will remember. Designing a logo can be expensive, but there are many free or low-cost options available. Online tools such as Canva and Adobe Spark offer logo design options. If you’re not confident in your design skills, consider hiring a freelance designer through platforms such as Fiverr or Upwork.

One trend that has emerged in recent years is the use of minimalist logos. Brands such as Apple, Nike, and Twitter have embraced this trend to create simple and memorable logos. By using a minimalist logo, you can create a modern and sophisticated brand identity that stands out in a crowded market.

3- Choose a Color Scheme

Color plays a crucial role in brand identity. It can evoke emotions, convey messages, and create a strong visual identity. Choosing the right color scheme for your brand is essential to creating a compelling brand identity. There are many online tools and resources that can help you choose a color palette that reflects your brand values and resonates with your target audience.

In recent years the use of bold and vibrant colors has taken off. Brands such as Glossier, Netflix, and Airbnb have embraced this trend to create a memorable and eye-catching brand identity. By using bold and vibrant colors, you can create a modern and engaging brand identity that stands out in a crowded market.

4- Pick a Font

Your font choice is another essential element of your brand identity. Your font can convey a specific mood or feeling and make your brand more recognizable. When choosing a font, consider the readability and legibility of the font. You also need to choose a font that is easy to read across different mediums, such as on a website or in print.

Sans-serif fonts such as Raleway, Montserrat, and Open Sans have been popular choices for many brands in recent years. These fonts are easy to read and have a modern and clean aesthetic. Another trend that has emerged in recent years is the use of custom fonts. Brands such as Airbnb and Netflix have commissioned custom fonts to create a unique and memorable brand identity.

5- Develop a Brand Style Guide

A brand style guide is a document that outlines your brand’s design elements, such as your color scheme, font, and logo. It’s a useful tool for ensuring consistency across all your marketing materials, from your website to your social media posts. Creating a brand style guide doesn’t have to be complicated. Start with a basic document that outlines your design elements and build from there as your brand grows.

6- Use Templates

Templates are a great way to create professional-looking designs without spending a lot of money. There are many free or low-cost options available for templates, including Envato, Canva, and Adobe Spark. Templates are available for a variety of design elements, such as social media posts, flyers, and business cards.

7- Be Consistent

Consistency is key when it comes to branding. Make sure that all of your design elements, from your website to your business cards, are consistent with your brand identity. This will help to create a cohesive brand identity that customers will remember.

In conclusion, designing your brand on a budget is possible. By following these tips and tricks, you can create a professional-looking brand identity without spending a lot of money. Remember to focus on your brand identity, choose a color scheme and font that reflects it, create a logo, develop a brand style guide, use templates, and be consistent. With a little bit of effort, you can kickstart your brand design and start attracting customers.

January 13, 2023 Design by Niharika Ranjan 0 Comments

Role of empathy in design

“Empathy is the cornerstone of any successful design.”

Because it is a skill that enables us to comprehend and share the same emotions as others, empathy is the first step in design thinking. We may connect with how other people feel about their issues, circumstances, or situations by putting ourselves in their shoes.

Let’s learn what empathy means

“The activity of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and experiencing empathetic feelings, thoughts, and experience of another without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience completely transmitted in an objectively explicit manner” is the definition of empathy.

It refers to the capacity to fully step into another person’s shoes and experience the world from their perspective in a particular scenario or context.

What role does empathy play in designing?

The design thinking process which is considered the beginning of any design project is empathy. The designer takes the time to get to know the user and comprehend their needs, wants, and goals throughout the empathy phase. This entails paying attention to and interacting with others to comprehend their psychological and emotional states.

You must put your preconceptions aside at the empathize phase. Human nature makes us believe that, in certain circumstances, other people would think and feel the same way we do, but this isn’t always the case. If we talk about UX designing where user satisfaction is really important, empathy plays a crucial role.

Let’s talk about the role of empathy in depth

A Bridge to better communication
Yes, empathy plays a great role in connecting the designer’s perspective with the client’s perspective. See, we all have our creative minds to fulfill the gaps between two creative minds empathy plays a great role. It gives a broader vision to both the designer as well as the client.

The outcome that can attract the mass
When we create any design it can be appealing to us but it’s not mandatory that the mass could enjoy or relate to that design. So to attract the mass, empathy plays a major role. It creates a link between innovation and alluring design. Let’s say, you are working on a logo design, and you’re fully into your creative zone and created a masterpiece that can be complex for the audience but great from a web or graphic designer’s perspective. Here, empathy plays a major part in giving the designer a vision that will attract the audience.

Listen, don’t judge
You may have a great experience in the field of UI/UX designing or graphic designing but it is really important to understand that to meet the client’s expectations. It is really important to have the patience to listen to the client’s needs without any judgments.

Yes, Empathy plays a major role in logo designing as well

Logo designing is the first step to building any brand. When designing a brand’s logo it’s important that you keep in mind the core concept and the brand image and to make something that speaks of it empathy is really important. As logo design is the first and foremost step in building a brand. For example usage of pop design in food brands, and minimalistic design for luxury brands. The logo design needs to be a replica of the brand image that you want to create for your brand.

No!! Empathy and Sympathy are not the same

You don’t want to make this mistake in the world of design thinking that empathy and sympathy are the same things. Although it is not a prerequisite for empathy, being able to express care for the welfare of another person is important. Now that you’ve started to comprehend what empathy entails, you can clearly distinguish between the two.

While designing, your objective is to comprehend the people for whom you create, not to emotionally respond to their current situation. To create a solution that helps solve a problem they face, the Empathize stage of design thinking requires you to visit your users in their natural environments, learn about how they behave and conduct interviews with them. To do that, empathy is necessary—not compassion.

Yes, there are challenges if you are going this way.

Being completely empathetic to everyone is challenging since people are by their very nature incredibly diverse. Being a compassionate employer includes, for instance, creating and managing work teams in which you show complete empathy to a person who is experiencing personal difficulties and who, as a result, withdraw from their work. But if this starts to affect coworkers’ workloads or well-being, a problem rapidly starts to surface.

Another illustration would be in product design, where it may be conceivable to add a variety of new features that completely meet a user’s needs, but if doing so makes the product expensive for everyone, the product’s evolution was incorrect.

Let’s end it by saying

Because it enables us to fully unearth and comprehend the buried needs and feelings of the people we design for, empathy is crucial for us as designers, and it is especially significant within the context of design thinking. The first stage of the design thinking process is called “empathize,” and it enables us to create ideas that satisfy the three criteria for a successful product or service: appeal, viability, and practicality.

FAQ

Why is empathy important for designers?

Empathy is essential for designers because it enables us to fully uncover and comprehend the buried needs and emotions of the people we design for, empathy is crucial for us as designers, and it is especially important within the context of design thinking.

How do you develop empathy design thinking?

The easiest way to develop empathy design thinking is by following these 5 simple steps-

Learn to observe and listen
Research the required design
Reflection and Analysis
Brainstorming for proper solutions
Developing prototypes of possible solutions.

How do you use empathy in design thinking?

The best way to use empathy in design thinking is that you must set aside your perspective and consider things from the other person’s angle to use empathy effectively. Once you understand that a person’s behavior is simply a reaction based on their prior knowledge and experiences, you can recognize behavior that initially appears to be overly emotional, stubborn, or unreasonable.

Why is empathy important in UX design?

Understanding, mirroring, and ultimately sharing another person’s feelings, desires, and motive is what is meant by empathy. Empathy in UX design helps us comprehend our users’ hopes, fears, capabilities, limitations, justifications, and ambitions in addition to their current problems.

December 8, 2022 Branding by Niharika Ranjan 0 Comments

Why should you consider simplifying your design?

“Make it simple, but significant.”

Putting too much food on our plates leads to overeating. In the same way, a lot of elements create havoc on the canvas….

As designers, we design to attract, inspire, create desires and motivate people. For any designer, it is really important to understand the story behind any idea, campaign or product. And then portraying it in the simplest and shortest way possible.

Consumers are served with a humongous variety of content, by simplifying your content you will leave a longer impact on your audience. Simple may seem easy, but you still need to be strategic. You can’t simply delete vital information to make room for white space. Think about the information your users require and how to provide it in the smallest possible space.

Let's see what all we should keep in mind….

Well-presented Content is a charmer

A well-tucked-in black shirt looks more appealing than an expensive oversized flower print t-shirt. In the same way, a well-presented creative leaves a more powerful impact on the audience.

Highlighting the moral of the story

It is very difficult to convey an hour-long movie on a single creative or banner, so don’t even try that. It is better that you highlight the moral of the story which will not only give shape to us your content but will also help you to focus on the main objective.

Let your design “breathe”

The best and the simplest way to create a proper design is by following the “Z-pattern” of designing which follows a line placing all the objects at the correct focal level as well as giving adequate breathing space. The 80-20 rule is an excellent place to start when thinking about making changes to a design.

Build Curiosity

The end goal of every brand is to create awareness. People tend to remember weird, quirky stuff, so go for that…. Instead of telling your audience everything, try to arouse a question within them.

It goes better with Working memory

It is quite difficult to remember a lot of details while a short, crispy and to-the-point text is easy to remember. It allows you to focus your attention, resist distractions and make decisions.

A design that’s too complicated or “too designed” can come in the way of what you want to communicate to the audience. Make sure that every element of your design should emphasize on getting to the desired destination. Strip out all that extra element that can come in between you and your audience. Go for a clean, informative and easy-to-understand design. Avoid the clutter-heavy design for a small screen as it might ruin the user experience in nanoseconds.

Advantages of a simple design

Audiences don’t have time to waste on complexity

No one is going to wait and keep on looking at your design trying to unlock the complexity in your design. Making it user-friendly should be the ultimate goal of any designer. Highlighting important elements, trying to communicate through your design and removing the unnecessary cluttering elements is how you can simplify your design.

Simplicity can be strategic too

It’s a myth that simple designs are easy to make. Well, as a matter of fact, simple designing can be more difficult than a complex design. Creating a simple design that is appealing as well as self-explanatory is the sign of a great designer

A great way of communication

Does communication simply mean exchanging information through different means in that case what is better than simple design? This indeed has the best of both worlds: good looks + engaging short text.

Focus on these golden questions

While designing a simplistic design ask these golden questions from your inner designer.

How easily can you understand what the design is trying to depict?
Is this simple or incomplete?
Is my subject appealing or not?

If you are able to answer these three questions, you are good to go.

Keep this in your mind!!

In the end, users won’t consider how innovative and impressive your design is if they can’t find what they’re looking for. They simply want to know why things aren’t “where they should be.” And when you want them to convert, that’s really not the ideal attitude.

Going deep into your user’s mind and using that understanding to design gives you a further vision to eliminate inconsequential elements and closes the gap between the user’s goals and the major means to achieve those goals is how you achieve simplicity in design. It’s not just about using minimal colors or including whitespace. To put it in another way, achieving simplicity in design helps you stay tuned into your users’ needs, gives them the impression that you are listening to them, and enables you to efficiently focus on solutions that are most suited to solving the particular issue you are trying to solve.

FAQ

Why simplicity is important in design?

Creative design agency is a company that offers creative designing solutions for you branding, marketing and advertising needs through their graphics and other tools.

How do you simplify the design process?

You could do so by following these processes:
1- Mind mapping
2- Feedback
3- Communicable

Is simplicity a good design principle?

Simplicity is definitely a good design principle as it takes into account the user’s objectives and offers the most straightforward path to achieving those objectives.

Why is visual simplicity important?

The visual simplicity of an image is a characteristic we seem to quickly extract. Simple designs tend to be more aesthetically pleasing. Simplicity is more accessible as well as more impactful.

May 18, 2020 Website by Sanjeev 0 Comments

How you can effortlessly design a website for your small business that creates an impact.

The current crisis arisen due to COVID19 has yet again made us realize the importance of having your business online. But especially for small businesses finding the right website designer could become complicated. If you are on a lookout for the same, then read this blog to understand the complete process involved.

It’s crucial to know about the process to have maximum control over the expenses and quality of work delivered. Running a small business comes with micromanagement of resources cause most of the things are handled by a single person. You’d want to save your money and have a website designed to create an impact. With the help of online tools and resources, now you can achieve both.

Whether you choose among the many web developing platforms or do it yourself, it all comes down to the nature of business and what you’re hoping to achieve by having a website. Either you can have a website that provides all the necessary information and regular updates or an E-commerce store from where you can sell your products online. With multiple options available at your fingertips you could:

1. Find the best website designer for a small business or
2. You can do it by yourself.

We will explore both the options side by side so that you can decide on your involvement. Maximum involvement could assure the outcome closest to you and save on expenses. On the other hand, an expert should bring the best to the table and save your time. Both the options have their pros and cons but this blog will help you to decide how to have the best of both the worlds.

Set your goals and decide

The very first thing you need to decide is the purpose of having a website. It helps in deciding the kind of website required for any business and brand. The internet offers multiple fronts to be benefited from. Few popular kinds of websites are as follows:

1. E-commerce

2. Blogs and Personal

3. Informational

4. Online Community

5. Photo Sharing

6. Resume

7. Portfolio

8. Catalog and Brochure

You may explore more about them each here: webyurt.com. To decide the best option for your small business you could take the help of someone or hire an expert. To find an expert you can search on clutch.co or any other B2B rating and reviewing platform.

“Our digital future is about enabling better productivity and decision-making to enjoy a better quality of life.” – Yacine Baroudi

Choose your address

Websites are mostly accessed via Domain name. Think it of as an address to your virtual property. Choose your URL / Domain name or web address carefully cause this will be the thing you’d tell someone who wants to access your website. You can find a detailed guideline for choosing a domain name or URL on web-marketing.uk. To book your domain, you can use services like Godaddy, Bigrock, or other ISPs.

Content is key

Populating websites with content that has to be unique and creative. It’s one of the steps where you can save a lot without having any technical skills. If you are good at writing then you might own it completely. To have the content compatible with the website, a consultant could help you with this too. To avoid any mistakes in writing and for polishing it like a professional, use Grammarly, it’s a great tool for everyone.

“Our job is not to create content. Our job is to change the world of the people who consume it.” – Andrea Fryrear

Design the website

66 percent of people would prefer to see something beautifully designed versus something plain and simple. User interface and User experience are of utmost importance, read our other blog to know more about the importance of website design. The website where design plays an important role.

If you wish to design the website on your own and lack technical skills, there are still plenty of options available, like:

1. Weebly – Best for business.

2. GoDaddy – Best for a quick and easy business site.

3. SITE123 – Best for a quick and easy site.

4. WordPress.org – Best for creative freedom and blogging.

5. WordPress.com – Best for blogging.

6. Squarespace – Best for design.

7. Strikingly – Best value for money.

8. Shopify – Best for e-commerce.

9. BigCommerce – Best for large online stores.

10. Wix – Best UI based CMS.

Please note that to use these website builders you still need to have a basic knowledge of website designing.

Designing a website is important and it’s been advised by experts to get it done by a professional website designer, like xVS Creations. You can also look for the best website designers for small business on platforms like themanifest.com

Either you do it by yourself or get it done by a website designer, this step will involve multiple iterations and revisions. One option to help in deciding the UI is to buy a theme. You can find a theme for HTML5, WordPress, Shopify, Woocommerce, and other platforms from sites like ThemeForest.

“Your website is the center of your digital eco-system, as a brick and mortar location, the experience matters once a customer enters, just as much as the perception, they have of you before they walk through the door.”

― Leland Dieno, Face The Book With Your Small Business

Look for best visual assets

The website is not only about text and links. You need it to look good and personalized. To do that you need images, videos, and other multimedia assets that explain your content and make it presentable. Again, you can do this on your own if you’re a graphic designer. To help you through it and make this process easy there are few online tools which can help you:

· Stock images website (Pexels, Unsplash, Stocksnap.io)

· Easy to create graphics (Canva, Snappa)

· Easy video creating tools (Adobe Express)

There are multiple more tools available just like the few mentioned above. You can also take the help of Motion graphic artist and graphic designer.

Host and Publish

Once everything is designed and created all that is left is to publish it for the world to see your amazing work. Hosting your website means allocating the space and place on the internet. You can find multiple packages offered by your Hosting ISPs. Now go ahead and publish your website, you might need a bit of assistance for this step but you will get plenty of help from ISPs itself or the experts you’ve been involved with.

Conclusion

For sure there are a lot of steps involved to get a website up and running and could take a lot of your time. But there are options available where you can do it all on your own or by taking a little bit of help from someone or experts. On the other hand, this field presents with a lot of flexibility and you can hire an expert to do all of for you effortlessly. That’s the reason people like to hire website design companies/agencies. If you’re still asking yourself that, “I need a website designer” then you could contact us. We would be happy to help you at any step for getting web design services for your small businesses.

FAQ

Which website builder is best for small business?

There are many website builders available with the option of doing from scratch using coding skills. Asses your requirement and skills and then select. Most of the small businesses websites on the internet are developed using WordPress

How much does it cost to build a website for a small business?

If you’re really tight on the budget given the nature of your business. The reasonable cost for a website should start from $300 or 20,000 INR. It can be lower if you can do all of the things all by yourself and higher if you’d hire someone.

How much does it cost to hire someone to build a website?

A good website developer would charge you more because of the experience and skills. The more you spend on developer the more you get in return on quality and time-saving. You could also hire a freelancer for specific work to save money on other fronts. The cost could vary drastically from $10 an hour to $150 an hour and more.

How can I create a small business website for free?

If you’re good at designing skills and other activities required in developing a website you can save a lot. The only thing you will be paying for would be domain and hosting costs, which means you can design a website for free.

May 1, 2020 Website by Sanjeev 0 Comments

Website where design plays an important role

Let’s see how crucial is to design a website.

There’s no doubt that a website in the present time is a virtual place of your business or organization and like our physical place we all want it to deliver the best experience to an incoming user. The experience matters for example, when visiting a store, we evaluate every other detail, from the entrance to the billing and the reception to the check-out. The same goes for our online store or place and here are some statistics to provide more clarity on the importance of website design:

1- It takes on an average of 50 milliseconds for a user to decide whether to continue scrolling the website or leave.

2- 94% of first impressions are design-related.

3- People who like to continue shopping on the same website are as high as 90% if the UX is to their liking.

4- 2/3 of the people visiting your website tend to stick because of the design aspect of it.

Not only these but there are plenty of more stats available on the internet portraying the importance of website design for your startup, business, organization, and every other thing you put on the internet.

So the main questions standing are what to do about the design of your website if you already have one or what to look for if you’re planning to design a new one?

The key is to make users’ experience easy, the design must be simple for them to understand and navigate. Also focus on the aesthetics of the website to keep them engaged for a longer duration of time. To achieve both goals here are a few things that need to be taken into consideration while designing a website:

The aesthetic of a website should resonate with the theme of the brand.
Make sure that your website should load fast and interact quickly.
Place your important information that helps the user to decide in a way so that it’s always easy to find.
Assign a proper hierarchy for the content placed on the front-end.
Use colors and font that are pleasing to the eyes.
Put time to design the banners and other images that convey more information than using just text. It’s better at many places now to use even videos and GIFs.

Keep these things in mind.

Website design is a joint effort of an artist and a technical person who can work in sync to provide the best results. It’s a goal set to achieve by mastering two different sets of skills. Some people are great with both of them but mostly not. The best option is to hire people who have the expertise to manage both of the resources, such as designing agencies.

To know more about website designing you can contact us.

FAQ

What is the importance of website?

A website creates a strong position for your brand on the internet. It serves as an anchor point of all the information you put on various platforms. Increasing validation and authentication are a couple of reasons you should have a website.

What is the most important thing in website design?

The most important thing in website design is to provide an easy and engaging experience to the user visiting your website.

What is the use of Web design?

Website design will help you to deliver an engaging and easy experience to the user if done right. It’s a form of communication that needs to be designed smartly.

What makes a website attractive?

The ease of access and proper information that helps a user is key. The aesthetics of a website needs to be worked out in a way that supports these two things and also goes with the theme of your brand.

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