WordPress used to serve just as a blogging software, but according to a WordPress survey, 66% of respondents use WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS). It has developed into a powerful platform over the years. WordPress is much more innovative than plain website building. The growth of WordPress began with new products such as plugins or themes, and now there is so much more. It has become to be known as a popular platform more than anything else. No matter what kind of business you have WordPress has what you need to be able to display your product in the most appealing way.

WordPress developers have developed different “plugins” that will cater to your specific needs. One of them is called Photoshelter. It is used for photographers to create a portfolio and website for their business. It is search engine friendly, therefore attracting new clients. It is also used as a selling tool where photographers can even sell prints or downloads. Another WordPress based platform is Tickera which is used for online ticket sales. This is especially great for event organizers because it allows users to buy tickets directly on the site, deliver them digitally, and check-in at the event with their iPhone through the app.

Scribe was created by Copyblogger Media and is a content marketing software. It is basically your own personal writing assistant that uses three simple steps: research, optimize, and connect. It will show you topics and keywords that your audience prefers, analyze your content, and will help to crosslink your content to increase usability and time on site.

Not only is WordPress great for all types of sites listed above, it can also be used to create beautiful websites to share your wedding on your own website, or share your music with your fans. Also, using a WordPress site for your restaurant allows users to view your location and hours, menu, and even make reservations right from their mobile device like the ones Innovise helped to create for Louisville restaurants Rye and Decca.

Source

Minimalism is one the most effective design approaches when building a website. It produces less clutter and noise, therefore creating a more memorable and pleasing experience for the audience viewing your page. Converting to a minimalist design means having less pages of information, but you will find the results to be very beneficial. Applying this approach to the design of your web site will make your content easier to load, as well as read. You will also find your site will look much more professional.

The saying that less is more is the perfect depiction of what minimalism is. Having a site that’s clutter free will get your point across in the most efficient way. Getting rid of everything that is not essential will increase the quality of your site. Another important thing to keep in mind is that clutter and the overuse of ads will distract users and turn them away from your page.

Minimalist websites will also display better and faster on mobile device screens. Maintenance and updates will be much easier with a lighter website, and also decrease load time, therefore making a more pleasant user experience. The lighter your site, the better.

Implementing a minimalist approach to the design of your website can be a smooth process if you have a good understanding of layouts and grids, and can apply these things when developing your site. Here are a few tips to start with when converting your site and simplifying content:

• Minimizing your content is the first step. Remove all junk, and only keep information that helps get your main message across.

• More than 4-5 navigation pages is usually unnecessary.

• Keeping graphics to a minimum helps with not overwhelming your visitors.

• Any kind of “feeds” such as popular feeds, recent feeds, or Facebook and Twitter feeds, will distract your users from what is important.

The last element to take into consideration is style. This includes textures, colors, and fonts that will attract your audience. Textures can make your website more appealing when used with fitting colors and fonts. Having 2 or 3 colors is best because it is simple and consistent. When it comes to fonts, using something simple and appealing is imperative when going for a minimalist approach.

Innovise helped develop a minimalist website for Rye, a local Louisville restaurant, that is simple yet effective. This site beautifully demonstrates all of the elements of minimalism, and gives a clean and professional impression to visitors.

Minimalism is a very beneficial approach to web design. It gives your users what they want, which is clear, concise, and useful information.

Source

According to Mashable Inc., 2013 is the year of responsive design. It is a somewhat new concept in web design, and is still evolving and changing, but there are still some fundamentals and facts to familiarize yourself with.

Although responsive design creates websites that are mobile-friendly, referring to it as mobile design would be doing the approach an injustice. Responsive design is a whole web design. That is the main difference between mobile design and responsive design. It creates sites that give users uncomplicated navigation and reading, along with very little browser resizing, scrolling and panning.

Another must-know for web designers is that image quality is more crucial than the number of images. This is because a low quality image doesn’t look good on any size screen. Having minimal load time is also just as important. Scaling images with CSS properties, avoiding full-size images, and modifying them for the internet are all methods to maintain great image quality. The Sony USA website is an example of how sharp image quality and quick load time is maintained no matter that the size of the image is.

When it comes to responsive typography, line length is the most important aspect. Type should depend on the width of the screen. 50-75 characters is typically used for desktop websites, and 35-50 characters should be used for mobile devices. Using fancy or extravagant fonts can look great on big screens, but not so much on smaller screens. Using a normal sans sarif style and even strokes will be the most beneficial type to use. The Hardboiled Web Design website shows all these guidelines being used by having a very easy to read typeface, suitable line length, and it even performs great on mobile devices.

Providing easy and efficient navigation is also a top priority, as it will assure that user experience is as comfortable and uncomplicated as possible. A good responsive design site will have its navigation laid out in different areas depending on the browser’s width. An example of a site that has great navigation is Food Sense’s website.

Responsive design is so much more than just making a website look good and perform efficiently on mobile devices. It’s about providing the finest user experience regardless of what device they are viewing it on.

Source

Fonts come in a wide variety of types and styles. Everyone likes to have several options to choose from at the time of creating a site and no one likes messing with too much coding unless necessary.

Google Fonts has a wide variety of fonts that you can use. Those who are familiar with it probably think that is a very useful tool but know that when it comes to WordPress sites it can be an issue unless you have some coding skills. Before this plugin existed you would have had to know how to change the fonts directly in the CSS file and change a few lines of code. Some people tried it but others, just had to keep the ones that came installed at first because they simply do not feel comfortable editing the stylesheet. Generally, an overall font is set in the body of a website as you can see below.

body {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, 
     Futura, sans-serif; 
     font-size: 1em; 
     padding:0; 
     margin:0; }

The fonts which normally come with operating systems when installing, such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Georgia – using CSS in styles.css, you can define a font-family for an element on page. Also, you can use external fonts – this means users don’t need to have that font on their system. Normally to use the @font-face rule to define your own font family you can put it in the top of style.css like this:

@font-face {
	font-family: Museo300;  
	src: local('Museo300-Regular'), 
		url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.ttf") format('truetype');  
	font-weight: normal;  
}

Then later on, you can write:

.post-item {font-family: Museo300}

Now, the new Google Webfonts plugin will do all of this for you and you don’t need to worry about having to mess with any CSS. All you need to know do is download the plugin, install and activate it, that’s all.

In the following video you will be able to learn how to install the plugin and get it ready to use. Get creative! there are thousand of different fonts you can use ! Below the video you will find a link that will take you to the wordpress site where the plugin is available to be downloaded.

References: Fonts info - WordPress plugin