Companies big and small have been rushing to embrace the new GDPR regulations that came into effect last Friday.
What is GDPR and how it applies to your business?
GDPR stands for “General Data Protection Regulations” and is set of regulations on data protections for individuals residing in the European Union. As many aspects of our lives increasingly rely on our personal data collected and stored online, the EU has taken additional measures to protect individuals’ private data.
More...
We are happy to announce that you can now add SSL certificates to sites built on the Signalmind platform.
With an SSL certificate your website will be available on the HTTPS protocol, with a little secure icon in the browser address bar. Using a secure connection ensures that sensitive data is not modified during transfer. In addition, Google is recommending that sites use a secure HTTPS connection, and might be considering it as a minor SEO factor.
More...
For those of you who have not heard of Zapier, it's an awesome service that acts as a middleman for integrating various SaaS platforms. In a nutshell, with Zapier you can create connections ("zaps") to push data from one application/platform to another using triggers and actions.
More...
As a freelancer, most likely you've had the experience of working with a client who won't stop asking for changes. While some revisions are inevitable, too many revisions can be costly to you as they use up your time, delay the project completion (and the final payment), and can be detrimental to the quality of the final product.
Let's face it - situations where the client approves your first design take as is are rare. With most projects a client will request changes. In many cases change requests are productive and valid. The client trusts your abilities and best intentions. However, the client might have come up with other ideas since the initial discussion, or had not communicated certain requirements well enough. Or, since design is subjective, the client's preferences are simply different from yours. These types of revisions should be anticipated.
The trouble starts when revisions happen for the wrong reasons: either the client lost faith in you, or you are stuck with a micromanaging unreasonable client.
1. It is all about trust
Trust is a critical factor in sales, and it is equally as important for the success of the project. When trust fades away, working together becomes difficult.
More...
This week we've published an awesome feature - the ability to add full screen video backgrounds to pages. Check out this demo website to see an example built on SignalMind.
Why video backgrounds?
Video has been one of the most effective ways of communication. Adding a silent video background to a website's home page can create a powerful first impression and foster a positive emotional connection with your site visitors. Creating a website for a restaurant? A video background showcasing the food, the chef in the process of cooking, or the ambiance of the place can be a very effective way to offer the site visitors a glimpse of what they would be experiencing in real life. A website for a product or service? A video footage displaying the benefits or how-to's can provide loads of critical information to your visitors in a very compact manner, before they even get to reading any text.
More...
We added a couple of handy features today. One is the ability to add animations to page elements. The animations can trigger when an element becomes visible (on page load or when the visitor scrolls down to the element), or on hover (when a visitor moves their mouse over the element).
Animations are an easy way to add interactivity and elegance to a web page. In fact, check out the responsive website builder page on our website to see the animations feature in action.
More...
Here are a few general practical tips on building responsive sites that I would like to share.
Getting started and getting inspired
When starting a website project, it is a good idea to research other websites or templates for inspiration and ideas. For example, if you need to build a website for a photographer, you can google "Best photographer sites" or "Photographer New York" – anything to bring up other sites in the industry (preferably on the higher end). This is a great way to get ideas about potential layout and look-and-feel. Of course, you won't be copying an existing website, this is about getting actionable ideas that will help you move forward.
More...
This is the second article in the series on responsive web design ideas and tips. In this post I’d like to mention a couple of specific and
simple ideas for creating compelling responsive websites and landing pages.
Backgrounds
Here is a an example of using a combination of background images and background colors or gradients on a page:
(And here is a preview link to the above example, if you’d like to check it out in
a browser.) Let's talk about how this is done.
More...
I am starting a series of blog posts on responsive design tips, and simple things you can implement to create compelling web presences. Here is the first article in the series.
Content priority
While the need to scroll is expected on small devices, you want to make sure that the most important information stays within the visitor's reach and does not get pushed way down. Before you start on the design process, map out the order in which the content needs to appear on the smaller devices first, to prevent the high priority elements from being shoved too far down.
More...