Navneet Panchariya - Web Designer | UI Designer | Front End Developer

This year has brought powerful new UI concepts, open source projects, and new hacks/tricks for web designers and developers. Those who are interested in what makes good web design have probably noticed the steady improvements. Looking back even one decade to 2003 you'll find the Internet and the WWW have come a long way. In this article I want to reflect back back over 2013 at some of the more popular web design trends. Some have been going on for years, but I noticed a peak this year with more designers accepting and even improving upon these techniques. Dynamic Web Forms This has been one of my favorite topics worth discussing because of the incredible advancements with jQuery plugins. I like to demo many JS libraries, yet jQuery is still my personal choice for any new project. I recently found a very handy resource which collects jQuery form plugins to improve user experience. There are other plugins on there too, but the growing category has me giddy every t...

If you have a smartphone, a tablet or a regular computer, chances are you have used an app at some point. We can't get enough of them. They make life easier and quicker. Apps help you remember things, help you find and see things and just all around help you be an awesome(r) person. There's so many to choose from, whether you want a mobile app or a web-based app. Maybe you want something for your Android phone, or perhaps something to boot up on your MacBook Pro. Either way, chances are the app is doing something amazing to help you or create some fun in your life. Apps are increasingly popular and it's becoming easier for people to create them. In making these apps, part of the marketing and promotional technique is to create a website that introduces viewers to the app. The intro to the app typically tells you what it is and why you need it, much like any product. However, there are some differences and tips available for making sure your app (or the site you...

Remember the good old days? You know which days I'm talking about; the days not so long ago when we used to design websites to fixed widths. Looking back now they seem like such a simpler time; a happier time; a time when I could recite every font that was available to use online without a second thought. The truth is that Responsive Web Design changed everything. The world was flat and now it's round, I was blind and now I see, the web was pixels and now it's percentages. With the introduction of RWD, it is vital that we as designers evolve our workflow to better suit the demands of the new web. Many of us have voiced our frustrations on how Photoshop's fixed pixel approach is unsuitable for designing the fluid layouts needed for a responsive website but no useful alternatives have been offered. The web design world is desperate for a bespoke software that is built from the ground up with RWD in mind. Products like Adobe Reflow are a great start, as it shows th...

Within the past couple of weeks, I handed in my notice, after spending over fifteen years working in-house as a designer of websites and magazines for a publishing company. This wasn't a quick or easy decision; but the time feels right to strike out and apply everything I've learnt both through the job - and in spite of it - to working for myself as a freelancer. In the months, even years, that I spent thinking about this change, a lot of thoughts went through my mind about what makes a good freelancer, and what makes a not so good one. If you're thinking about making a similar change, these are a few questions that I felt I needed to ask of myself. It's best to reflect on this stuff before you take the plunge. Is freelancing really for you? This sounds like an obvious question, but do you want to be a freelancer? Spend a little time thinking about whether you really, really want to do it. Not liking your day job, wanting more control over your destiny, ...

Stripping a website to its barest form, ignoring for a moment, content which is only text and images, all a browsing experience is, is navigation. It's clicking links that take you to other pages with more links. The main navigation of your site is such a crucial part of this as it represents the persistent doorway to the most important pages of your content. Many sites also have secondary navigation, relegated to the bottom of the site, containing 'boring stuff' such as Terms of Use, or Privacy Policy links; it makes sense not to have those links in your main navigation; you don't want them spoiling your landing page. But here's a hint, if you have to have a site map included in that secondary navigation bar, you're doing it wrong. Be boring Good design requires good organisation. You need to work out what information is necessary to the user, and then divide that into sections. This is a standard process for web designers, and unless your site ...

Most web design and/or development projects have some history behind them. Sometimes you have to re-design or re-develop a company's existing website to update it and add new functionality. In most cases, there is some history to the website; its business goals have been identified, research has been carried out, and you are able to look back on historical data such as analytics to aid in making decisions throughout the design and development process. You're able to identify the improvements that need to be made. But what happens in the rare case that client company has no website? They have never even thought about having a website in the past. This is totally new territory to them - they've got  a totally blank canvas. This isn't the usual project that I come across, but having been in this exact position recently, I'd like to share some of the steps I took to complete the project and some of the things that I learned along the way. Initial questio...

Email marketing is probably the oldest and the most successful form of marketing for the web. Broadly, email marketing involves sending specialized custom emails to generate leads, promote an offer, serve targeted advertisements or initiate deals. Email marketing increases your brand's radius, allowing you, the marketer to build robust brand value around your product. But most marketers make a basic mistake - not creating email templates that are optimized for a typical user's inbox. Sending emails that aren't formatted, designed or properly structured actually reduces your credibility and when users see a scattered email in their inbox, they simply dont pay attention. Now, how do you optimize your email templates for maximum conversions? This generally depends on  the subject of the email but regardless of the product or service you're trying to "sell", here are a few basic tips to create inbox optimized email templates for better conversions: ...

What makes a great website? There are many ways to measure the effectiveness and quality of a website. Web designers can use a handful of quantitative data that will help them determine if the web design is effective, especially for e-commerce where the added value to a business is measurable. But for any site, one of the most telling signs is user experience. Web user experience (UX) describes the overall experience of a website visitor. It gives us a glimpse of how they feel when they browse a site. It therefore allows us to check for areas that need improvement. Which pages produce high exit and bounce rates? Where do visitors spend more time? What pages get the most activity? These are all questions, to which answers are provided by data that we can easily find with an analytics tools - data that will help us fix any design flaws and improve user experience for better results. Providing great user experience should be the motivating force behind web design. Webs...

It's like biting your nails. It's like sucking your thumb. It's like cursing too much. We all have some bad habits, some we just cannot seem to shake. I'm not sure why that is. I mean, no matter how wrong you know it is or how bad it is for you, it's just impossible to stop. And have you realized that half the time you don't even notice? Tomorrow, you can look down at your nails and wonder where they've disappeared to. And eventually, you'll remember that you happily nibbled them off. As a designer, you're probably no different. You're a human and no one is perfect, plus design is just a tough industry. Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies with the things we do and we never seem to notice, nor do we stop. Being a designer, there are four things I notice most often that I and my colleagues do: Aesthetics vs. ease of use We are designers. We are not artists. We are asked to fix problems, create solutions and design things. I ...

Here's one thing that never made sense to me: people make websites so others can find out more about them, but most "About Us" pages absolutely suck. They're either really long and boring or really short and mysterious. Not many people understand the best way to go about these pages. Many believe the "About Us" page is an afterthought because everyone wants to see the work or the products or read up on the services. And while that's true, providing the right history and information can increase a website's effectiveness. The importance of telling your story As designers and developers, we can spend a lot of time focusing how we want a web design to look and how we want to present the content. The meaty stuff takes up most of our focus so the extra pages like the about page and contact page are just a formality. But no longer! We live in a time where people desire a deeper connection. Brands are successful when they're consiste...