Best Social Media Plugins for WordPress

Today, the influence of social media is great .it is considered as the most important element in digital marketing.it is the second biggest source of traffic on the web after search engines. Some of the famous social networking sites include Facebook, twitter, google plus and LinkedIn have established their brand by grabbing a lot of traffic towards their site.

People are always finding a ways of sharing their views, status, pictures and articles. Having a social media icon integrated into your website plays a big role in attracting social media traffic. If your site is built on WordPress platform, then, fortunately, there are a number of free social media plugins available for WordPress to choose from.

1. SOCIABLE 
Sociable | Download
Cost: free

2. SHAREBAR 
Sharebar | Download
Cost: free

In the settings, you can customize the width, background, and border of the menu, as well as set its exact position by specifying a left and right offset.

3. SHARETHIS 
Share This | Download
Cost: free

4. LOCKERZ SHARE 
Lockerz Share | Download
Cost: free

5. SHAREAHOLIC LINK
Shareaholic | Download
Cost: free

6. SLICK SOCIAL SHARE BUTTONS

Slick Social Share Buttons | Download |
Cost: free

7. SOCIAL TOOLBAR

Social Toolbar | Download
Cost: free

8. INSITEBAR

InsiteBar | Download
Cost: free

9. SHAREDADDY

Sharedaddy
Cost: free

10. GETSOCIAL

GetSocial
Cost: free

The above-given plugins help you to improve your website traffic.

Contact us for effective and affordable WordPress development services in Toronto area, e-commerce helps you to generate more leads by building a professional network and able to meet all your e-commerce needs.call here for more details – +1-647-799-0657

iMedia Designs | a Web Design company based in Toronto is an IT consulting firm offering strategy and web development services to e-commerce infrastructure.

Web Design Tips to Grab Visitor’s Attention [Infographic]

Want to create a Website to attract prospect visitor’s?You can customize the design elements like homepage, header, buttons and template to leave a lasting impression.here we will give some web design tips to help you inspire customers to keep surfing your site in Infographic.

Create your website today with IMediadesigns! A Toronto-based website design company creates digital strategies that cater to your needs.Read more at – 6 Awesome Design Tricks to Grab Your Visitors’ Attention

Breaking Out Of the Box: Design Inspiration

There is no doubt that simple Design is hard to find, since it requires a deep thought and inspiration. An intuitive simple design help visitors to accomplish their goals as early as possible. Colors and fonts play a major role to make the site stand out. Today, you will explore a couple of illustrations that may inspires you to try out some new color combinations and techniques.

Have a look at the following examples that uses inspiring shades and color palettes , 3D artwork with links and watercolors.

A Writer, A Hero

Clever executed light & shadows. The typewriter and the gun are super cool. Just enough details to be convincing.

Santa Monica

Illustration based on water fountains in Santa Monica. It’s the illustrative interpretation of Jeremy Booth. The shadows & light are like his trademark to recognize the work is his.

Girl – Goldfish

Refreshing style especially if you know it isn’t created on a computer. Bodil Jane is an illustrator from the Netherlands who creates almost all of her illustrations with ink and watercolors.

The Upshot

Illustration for The New York Times about an article that talks about how the same-sex marriage effort found a way around polarization. The legs and arms are such an eye-catcher here. I love the geometry and the way the colors are applied.

First Place Coffee

Identity for First Place Coffee. Smart how the star ribbon is cut out in the coffee cup.

Patagonia Dreaming II

Black and white photography can be super powerful. The mountains are of course a very thankful subject to work with as well. The light is so perfect in this photo. It creates this mystical atmosphere.

Dave Matthews Band 25th Anniversary

Insane amount of details in this poster to celebrate the fact that the Dave Matthews Band has been performing for 25 years. The texture on the car to get those details in are seriously inspiring.

36 Days. Numbers

A beautiful example of character webdesign. The distinctive feature here is the small head in combination to a much larger body. Great colors too. You can check out the other characters as well.

 

Playa/Beach Link

The design looks so wonderful with a tasteful color palette followed by analysing those lines with the darker parts on the body. It looks easy, but it isn’t. Look at the beautiful waves!

Canada Website Design : Imediadesigns, is the leading web design and development resource located in Canada. We will ensure the best user experiences with everything we build.

7 Logo Design Trends for 2017 [Infographic]

As we are moving with the wind of 2017, we have done a thorough research that will help you design a logo which conveys the message of the brand.Hope these effective logo design trends help you understand one of the important aspects of any website design process. Here we will discuss few modern logo design trends –

Consult your web design company what kind of branding you want to create that inspire your customers to use the product. iMediadesigns , a Toronto-based web design agency that helps you create your brand and make your business stand out from the competition.

6 Guidelines for Designing High-Performance Mobile User Experiences

No doubt, trust, and integrity are two main pillars of a strong relationship between the people. The same principle applies to brand’s product and their services. So it is necessary for each firm to create a first positive impression to improve its brand value. The design is the vital element when building lasting relationships with end users.

As usability of mobile devices has been increasing, users expect mobile services to perform well. Therefore a mobile user experience is a crucial factor to a trustworthy website.
In this article, we will discuss some guidelines that can help you design high-performance mobile user experience while meeting the needs of end users and businesses. Our team has collected these guidelines while designing native mobile applications in Toronto for multiple mobile platforms. Mobile applications need to improve its utility, need to be fast and reliable in order to stand in those environments.

Following these guidelines, designers are able to create a look and feel that is memorable and high-performing.

1. DEFINE UI BRAND SIGNATURES

Each user experience must reflect the purpose of the brand. Focus on the elements which are essential for improving brand recognition and loyalty.
Examples are featured images, wording, font style, and animations. Implementing these building blocks improves the design value and encourages customers to convert.

2. FOCUS THE PORTFOLIO OF PRODUCTS

Whether a company wants to launch a new website or want to promote its multiple products on one platform or if facing limited time and resources. At this point, design priority matrix needs to be setup to put the efforts on some of the targeted products that matter most. This kind of website design efforts helps to optimize performance in the most productive areas.

3. IDENTIFY THE CORE USER STORIES

Sometimes while designing the app, our teams have lost the initial list of requested features or impossible for them to build within the requested time period. While designing the product, it is important that customer should never be lost while finding and purchasing the product they are looking for regardless of whatever other functions that enrich the overall experience.

4. OPTIMIZE UI FLOWS AND ELEMENTS

Users can’t wait till your website elements load completely. Optimizing the UI elements and flows make visitors hold on your website and stop them from thinking that they are wasting their time. Various key points affect the Optimization of every UI elements –

• The number and type of UI elements on the screen
• Element characteristics
• Drawing technique

5. DEFINE UI SCALING RULES

However creating the most appealing web design which navigates smoothly is difficult. It is required to maintain the balance between functionality, aesthetics, usability and performance of a website. An UI scaling toolkit could help by conveying the relative significance of UI components.

6. USE A PERFORMANCE DASHBOARD

Performance dashboards are introduced to judge the performance of various design constraints plus the expectation of designers, developers, and marketers which are affected by the different requirements at all stages. We use dashboard for the following elements:

• Core user stories
• Benchmark
• Current measurement
• Goal
• Status

Conclusion

We have discussed six guidelines based on the different aspects of mobile app design. At IMediadesigns, our team is capable of improving the performance of brand products considering all the key factors in the web design process.

Best Online Courses for Future Web Professionals

For many of us, high school is already completed, higher education is also over before we know it. Now what to do next? Everyone is looking for a job related to their mainstream course. Everyone wants to have a high paid job career. In order to get that you need good skills to earn more than the average person. This article is for those who wants to pursue their career in the world of internet.

To become a web professional, you must acquire more knowledge of this industry. In most cases, people are taking different types of classes to get certified in one of the skills or you can say technologies that help you get qualified to undertake the job about which you have been dreaming. But sometimes life does not bring favorable conditions, in that case, online courses provide you with the anytime schedule, can be the best solution to such a situation.

There are several best online courses that will help you become a good web design and development professional.
Go Get a Design Job!

HTML5, CSS+, JavaScript Basics

Want to learn how to create a fully responsive design as IMediadesigns does? Join this course held by Richard Sneyd where you can learn the main points of CSS, creating dynamic content using JavaScript, incorporate the most powerful HTML tags, and more! Look at our responsive templates & responsive designs!
Pricing: $19 !!!

Photoshop for beginners

To become a professional web designer, you first need to learn the basics of Photoshop. This will help you practicing without having to drown in text-driven theory. join this course with Barin Cristian Doru to become a Photoshop warrior!
Pricing: $149

Photoshop CC for the Web

Dreaming about cool wireframes and ravishing mockups, well this course by Train Simple help you speed up your workflow and improve your web design skills.
Pricing: $79

Become a Senior User Experience (UX) Design Strategist

Want to become a web design leader? Mariano Goren will teach you tricks and principle UX design strategies to improve your productivity.
Pricing: $299

Total Web development Course

Laurence Svekis

This course will help you become expert at various web development topics. Like HTML, CSS, jQuery, PHP, Bootstrap, MySQL, JavaScript, and WordPress on the fly. Pricing: $40

Python Programming: The Step-by-Step Python Coding Guide

Jason Cannon , here you will learn everything about Python scripts and Python in common. Even you can download all materials for free.
Pricing: $199

C++ From Beginner to Expert

Join Arkadiusz Wlodarczyk course and become a C++ pro!
Pricing: $77

The WordPress Wizard Bundle

Ever dreamed of developing a WordPress website? This offering by StackSkills contains different cool themes and templates to develop a future site.
Pricing: $999

Build Your Brand: Blogging, SEO, Social Media & Relationships

Learn to optimize website ranking in the search engine results following web marketing hacks together with Rob Cubbon and become an SEO Expert!
Pricing: $99

Hope this article help you learn the web technologies and courses from scratch.

Custom Web Design: Imediadesigns, is a leading web design and development resource located in Canada. We will ensure the best user experiences with everything we build.

Top Key Attributes of a Quality UI

The term interface design has been in the limelight for so many reasons. Since the mobile world has taken over the large part of a digital industry. It is difficult to meet the user requirements than ever. The quality of user interfaces considered to be even more important by most of the companies for the growth of their business and internet of things.

You can see a variety of user interfaces from websites to thermostat controls in our homes, all includes in our daily experience. People are familiar with each type of digital displays and are expecting better experiences than used to get a few years ago, it is necessary you should consider the quality of UI when creating a website for customers. In this article, we will discuss some key attributes of a quality UI.

1) SIMPLICITY

Awesome UI’s have tendency to be nearly invisible. They should not look loud or unnecessary elements. A user interface should made up of logical elements including features and content that are essential for the user. Don’t rush just focus on the quality of the user experience.

2) CLARITY

Clarity is the most important element of any user interface. Remember, you must create an interface for the sole purpose of allowing users to interact with your website. An effective communication help users hold onto easily and enjoy the experience. Design clear and easy to read labels for buttons and actions, this improves navigation as well.

3) FAMILIARITY

The aim of any web design is to make an interface easy to read and understand. That means users can understand naturally what it is. So, it is important to show familiarity in your design. Like users don’t have to think while browsing through your web pages. Because they already understand it. When users are familiar with something, they know exactly what to do next. The user must familiar with icons on your website.

4) VISUAL HIERARCHY

Visual hierarchy is often overlooked by many designers but this is one of the attributes which is responsible for creating quality UIs. If you put too much information overload and reduce the quality of the user experience. This will make the user leave your website. The visual hierarchy between the different elements (size. color, contrast) should work together to give a clear understanding of your interface users accomplish their tasks.

5) RESPONSIVENESS

Responsive web design is what every web developer need to consider first when it comes to creating a successful UI for their clients. Since the google shows favoritism to mobile friendly websites, it is beneficial to work with a responsive interface. It is said that slow. 40% of people will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. A load time can quickly improve the user experience.

Working on these attributes can help you achieve your business goals. Although it takes time to learn these skills, each solution will successful improve the progress of your work and reduce errors.

Toronto Website Design : iMediadesigns involved in creating tends to deliver it right in first round and to achieve that we make sure that our process is simpler yet interactive with clients.

5 Tips for a Successful Web Design Career

The web design business is usually a difficult one, especially in case you are inexperienced. Being creative and skilled just isn’t everything. You also have got to learn how one can talk to your clients, learn how to manage your projects and methods to arrange your work. There are just a few matters I realized, a few of which I learned from mistakes, while others are recommendations I got from extra experienced designers. If you want to start a web design project or lots of satisfied clients, then you need to maintain in mind a number of things on the way to make a change. Listed below are some things I learned during my web designer profession, which helped me a lot in becoming a better web designer.

There are some very most important matters that any aspiring web designer will have to understand in order to build a reliable website. We will give you a reading list where you can get extra in-depth knowledge.

1- Effective Communication Skills-

Effective communication is a type of abilities that may make or destroy you in any subject, nevertheless, it’s certainly the most important aspect in website design where communicating with a customer, web designer, or developer can indicate the success of any project. It’s believed that creative souls aren’t intuitively chatty in nature; nevertheless, you need to talk intelligently about your work, communicate well and clear with each person in order to be successful.

2- Get experience-

Web design expertise is nearly as primary as skills or expertise. Whether it’s a service provider or a competent purchaser, people want to know the way a lot of expertise work, which businesses you’ve worked with and what tasks you’ve worked on. Start engaged on web projects before you hire any company to construct your portfolio.

3- Be confident! –

This can be tough to start with however it is going to include time. Be positive for your work! Believe on your thought and also you’ll see that if you happen to inspire believe, others will believe in your work too! Accept criticism and strategies from others and study methods to make your work stand out. As you’ll get better, more skilled and expert, you’ll additionally grow your confidence and your web design initiatives shall be effective. Additionally, don’t forget that confidence is key while you have to talk about your work.

4- Be organized-

In spite of which profession you select, being organized is a way to get success. When it comes to developing a website – being organized is especially most important. Maintain your computer files, folders of graphics, pictures, videos, and sound files. Also, be certain that you create a file for each client to ensure that work doesn’t get lost.

5- Follow other creative-

Following web design internet sites is valuable! You need to update yourself with the current design trends and likewise, see different pleasant websites to stay influenced. Additionally, follow successful designers on their websites or social media pages. Learn about their experiences and the way they became positive. This will support you more than you think.

Website Design is a competitive field, but you may get success by following the above tips for a successful web design career. Work for an agency that will help you achieve your interpersonal as well as professional goals.Or for more details watch this video –

How Functional Animation Helps Improve User Experience

People are attracted to visual elements more frequently than content driven creatures. However, we can maximize this impact with the help of animation. The rotating objects and the animated images are like eye candy and bright elements that invoke a call to action and help your website stand ahead from its competitors.

As a result, more and more web designers are considering animation as a functional animation that improves user-experience. It is considered as an important tool to meet the user and business goals. Creating a good UX is no easy task, using animation in web design at the place as well as at the right time can help you achieve UX goals. Apply UI animations with a purpose; make sure they are meaningful and functional.

In this article, we’ll talk about the role of functional animation in UX design and see when to incorporate motion into a design. Before we start, know what Functional animation is? Including a subtle animation in UI design to improve the overall functionality of the website. It has very clear and logical purposes including:

• Reduce cognitive load
• Prevent change blindness
• Establish better recall in spatial relationships
VISUAL FEEDBACK ON USER ACTIONS

An interactive web design provides feedback which makes you feel like you’re interacting with real elements such as buttons and controls on the screen. Visual feedback informs users about results of an operation. For example, a shake animation can be used when a wrong password is entered.

PURPOSE:
• Acknowledge that the system has received a user’s action.
• Confirm (or deny) a user’s action.
VISIBILITY OF SYSTEM STATUS

Visibility of system status is one of the important principles in user-interface design. Here you will able to understand the current status at any given time. For example – Data uploading and downloading processes are a great result of a functional animation.

PURPOSE:

Provide real-time notification of a current process, and enable the user to understand what is going on in the system easily.

VISUAL HINTS

A first time user may find it difficult to use a mobile app interface especially interfaces which contain unfamiliar or unique interactions. To help them use your UI, provide them a set of visual hints which drives their attention to the possible interactions.

For example, this functional animation can be found in the iOS camera app.

PURPOSES:

• Create necessary expectations by giving the user a clue of what is about to happen
• Help users orient themselves to the interface
• Tell users how they can interact with elements on the screen

NAVIGATIONAL TRANSITIONS

Navigational transitions are movements between different states in an app, from a high-level view to a detailed view. State changes often involve hard times for user, however using Functional animation you can help them through these moments of change.

PURPOSES:

• Define the spatial relationship between screens and elements
• Avoid a surprising transition by helping users comprehend the change that has just happened in the page’s layout

BRANDING

Whereas the previous animations are quite logical, this one is full of emotions. There are hundreds of apps that offer same user experience but the one which people love must have established some emotional engagement with them.

PURPOSES:

• Entertain users, bring fun to the design
• Create a signature of the product; help users relate to the product, increase a brand value.

Conclusion

Creating an animation which has utility only a half part .to be successful, one must build them naturally during a design process. When done correctly, animation can turn out to be a memorable experience for users.

Custom Website Design Toronto: Imediadesigns, is a leading web design and development resource located in Canada. We will ensure the best user experiences with everything we build.

7 UX Rules Every Designer Should Know

“User- experience” is one of the basic web design terms that gets replaced by the term “user interface” as if two are the same but they are not. Some designers are making their job at risk while defining web design and UX roles. Even the clients find it difficult to understand how to navigate, interact with the web.

IF someone knows what to do exactly with the UX, he will definitely able to create the best design in the world. You can improve the usability of your website if you know a little about UX strategy. In this article, we will discover some golden UX rules to improve project’s usability.

1) UX IS NOT UI

Even if your client doesn’t understand the difference between these two terms “UX” and “UI”, you’ll have to explain that user interface refers to the actual system they interact with and User experience is about the emotions.

2) UX IS NOT JUST A “WEB THING”

Web design is just a small part of UX. Every painting you see, the product you use, and even place you go, also has UX. You could have a bad experience at a restaurant, and a good one while opening a gift. Creating a smooth navigating website is a different game than the offline design. Being a web designer, you must expand your knowledge and helps you see projects from a fresh perspective.

3) UX CREATES GOAL-DRIVEN DESIGN

Every designer has to deal with the client’s interference some way or other.This may not be the best way to solve the specific problem. Some designers want to work in their own way and won’t listen to any other ideas. They create a goal driven design for the most effective result. Focus on the link that needs more traffic.

4) UX SHOWCASES YOUR BRAND

Even if your colors come easily, type fits together, images looks stunning but none of it matches brand’s identity. A good UX design must reflect its brand identity, so it is necessary to build something that meets clients’ needs and goals.

5) IDENTIFY BEHAVIORAL TRIGGERS

Psychology is the most effective UX element. To give something Good, you must analyze user behavior that heavily affects conversion rate. Research how users’ behavior changes throughout the day, how user gives time to engage in the website.

6) ENCOURAGE SCROLLING

Most of the users prefer Scrolling over clicking. Allow user go deep into the site and spend more time – making them more likely to convert. That’s why some designers place their calls to action at the bottom of the page, where users have to scroll to get to them.

7) LET CONTENT DEFINE THE INTERACTION

UX is not only about the icons you placed or colors you choose. Almost everything you see on the website is content whether that’s writing, images, or videos. For a successful result, one must develop a content strategy.

Are you planning to redesign a site? – Following these golden rules, you will able to create a user-friendly website.

Imediadesigns, is a leading website design resource located in Canada. We will ensure the best user experiences with everything we build.