This Just In: Excellent News and Magazine CSS Layouts

For those of us who experiment with CSS, it’s an exciting time. The advent of CSS Grid and Flexbox have opened up a whole new world of page layout possibilities.

And one of the more interesting uses for these tools is their integration within news and magazine-style websites. They often have more complex and unique layout requirements than other genres. It has led to some very creative solutions.

Today, we’ll show you some exciting examples of both news index page layouts and even a few for individual articles as well. Each one is hosted on CodePen, so you can see exactly how they were created.

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Great Grid

Here’s a prime example of CSS Grid’s fitness for a news page. It’s a 12-column layout, with a large feature story up top that takes up two-thirds of the first row. From there, it alternates between one-third and two-thirds stories below and a one-third listing along the right. The look creates a nice balance and allows each story to stand out.

See the Pen
News Layout by Marc Müller

Artistic Touch

These newfangled CSS techniques are often used to imitate classic print layouts. This magazine layout uses Flexbox to add retro shapes, multicolumn flowing text and a large featured image.

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Magazine Layout by Raisa Yang

A Fully-Visual Experience

This article layout looks attractive, yet fairly standard on first glance. A massive image on the left is paired up with nice typography on the right. But start scrolling and you’ll see what makes this one stand out. The first section of text scrolls as the image stays in place. Go further and you’re met with full-width images and multiple columns of text. It’s a clever design that will keep readers interested.

See the Pen
Article Development // Modular CSS Grid Layout Sections by Brian Haferkamp

Big Steps

The modern age of news sites has made visual stories, ones without a lot of text, quite popular. Here’s an interesting layout that could be a great fit for explaining multistep processes or listing the popular posts of the day.

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CSS Grid Magazine Layout by Elzette

Masonry Blocks

This CSS Grid-based masonry layout of posts has several things going for it. First, the layout is complex – but without being disorienting. The use of faded background images and legible typography make it easy to distinguish one article from the next. And the stunning hover effects make for a fun and effective user experience.

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CSS Grid Layout as Masonry case study by @Kseso by Kseso

Break Past Your Limits

So-called “break out” sections are a popular feature within articles. They are great for adding emphasis to important quotes or even images. But the CSS used to require all sorts of hacks in order to get an element to go beyond a fixed-width container. That is, until CSS Grid came along. This example demonstrates just how easy it is to integrate into your layout.

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Breaking Out With CSS Grid Layout by Steven Monson

Barebones

Sometimes it’s nice to see an example layout that eschews content. This makes it easier to grasp, especially if you’re just learning a new technique such as CSS Grid. With a clear outline of each container and helpful terminology, you’ll gain a better understanding of how this one was put together.

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CSS Grid Layout – New Terminology by Stacy

Pretty Posts

Post grids are a terrific solution for both news websites and blogs. A well-designed one is easy to read, provides some whitespace and adds interactivity. All of those traits are well-represented here. The clean card layout is easy on the eyes, while the hover effects give it a high tech feel.

See the Pen
Expandable Post Grid by Daniel Högel

Good News

Designing a news-oriented website can be a real challenge. It requires a strategy for getting your best content in front of users while ensuring that it entices them to click. And, once they are reading an article, you want to provide them with the best experience possible.

Thankfully, CSS layouts have never been more capable of helping you achieve these goals. Looks that used to be reserved for desktop publishing software are now easily replicated – as many of the snippets above demonstrate.

The first step is to take some time to think about how you want to present your content. From there, you can use one of these examples as a starting point to make it come to life.

If you’d like to see even more unique layout snippets, check out our CodePen collection.

The post This Just In: Excellent News and Magazine CSS Layouts appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Going Beyond Sales: 7 Types of Website Conversions to Optimize for on Your Website

If you’re looking to grow your business online, it’s time to start setting up different types of website conversions to help your company succeed. Whether you’re looking to earn more email subscribers or sell more products, you can set conversion goals that grow your business.

On this page, we’ll discuss what a conversion goal is, seven types of website conversions, and four steps for setting up your conversion rate goals.

Keep reading to learn more or give us a call at 888-601-5359 to learn how our conversion rate optimization services will help you drive more leads and sales.

What is a conversion goal?

A conversion goal is a website goal that requires a user to take a specific action, like purchasing a product, submitting a form, or signing up for an email newsletter, on your company’s site. You can set multiple types of goals for your strategy.

The important part with goal setting is that you make your goals measurable. If you can’t measure how your campaign’s performing, you won’t know if it’s driving results or needs to change.

When you choose the best types of website conversions for your business, you’ll get better results from your site.

8 types of conversion goals

When you create conversion goals, you have multiple options.

Let’s take a look at seven types of website conversion goals you can set for your business:

1. Purchase

The most common types of website conversions are sales.

Depending on your business, your kind of sale may differ.

If you’re an ecommerce store, your sales will focus more on people purchasing products. As a service business, your sales consist of people becoming clients or hiring your company for a one-time job.

2. Form submission

The next most common goal for a website conversion is a form submission. With form submissions, you entice your audience to sign up and request something. It can be anything, like a seminar, newsletter, or quote request.

To make a successful form, you must keep it short. If you ask users for too much information, it will discourage them from completing the form. You’ll need to test different form lengths to see what your audience responds to the most.

3. Sign-up

The next conversion goal is joining an email list or getting a text message subscription. While email sign-ups can be considered part of the “submitting a form” goal, it’s essential to keep this one separate because email sign-ups can be as simple as submitting an email address.

With email lists or text message subscriptions, your audience provides you with one piece of information to subscribe to your content.

Whether it’s emails about products or text messages about order shipments, you get connected with your audience and provide them with valuable information.

4. Clicking a button

Conversion goals can be as simple as clicking a button. Whether it’s a button to download a guide, visit a pricing page, or check out a product, you can use clicking a specific button as your conversion goal.

Clicking specific buttons can help you see how well your audience moves towards your goals. For example, if you want more people to visit your pricing pages, you can use buttons that guide them to those pages and track to see how many people click those buttons.

5. Create an account

Creating an account is one of the fundamental types of website conversions for ecommerce businesses. When someone creates an account, you get valuable information about your customers and can help improve their shopping experience based on how they browse.

This conversion goal helps you track how many new potential customers you’re obtaining. It’s an effective way for you to track and see if your strategies and tactics are successful at getting people to sign-up and make an account.

6. Content shares

A fundamental part of your site is the content you create. If you’re focusing on getting your valuable content in front of more interested eyes, you can set a conversion goal for content shares.

This goal is a great one if you’re looking to expand your reach. You can track how many people share your content with others to see if it’s effectively engaging your audience.

7. App install

One of the most popular types of website conversions is installing an app. With the growth of mobile, many companies push for people to download their mobile app. If you’re in this situation, you can use app installs as your conversion goal.

This goal is great if people don’t know much about your app or don’t know you have one! You can market your app to your audience and track how many people download and open your app.

How to set up conversion rate goals that work for your business

Now that you know the different types of conversion goals, you may be eager to start setting up a campaign to track one (or many) of these goals. Let’s take a look at four easy steps for setting up different types of website conversions.

1. Decide what you want to achieve with your overall campaign

First, know what you’re trying to accomplish with your campaign. Many of these types of website conversions are small goals that add up to your larger goal. To help you know which conversion goals to set, establish your larger goal.

In most cases, businesses aim to earn more conversions as their overall goal, whether it’s buying products or receiving clients. If that’s your goal, too, then you can establish that and start choosing smaller types of website conversions to help you reach your bigger goal.

By setting your overall goal, you’ll set yourself up for success when choosing types of conversions.

2. Understand your audience

When you’re setting goals, you must know your audience well. You need to understand what your audience wants from your business so you can create a conversion path that makes them more likely to convert.

It will benefit your business greatly to segment your audience based on their interests and develop different buyer personas for those segments. A buyer persona is a mock-up of a real-life potential customer. These personas help you understand various members of your audience so that you can create a more suitable path towards conversion.

When you know your target audience, you can set up micro-goals that fit them and lead them towards completing your conversion goals.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to get Group A to sign up for your event.

You know Group A likes feeling informed before making a decision. To move them towards this larger goal, you set up micro-goals, like reading a blog post and watching a video of the event in previous years, that guide them towards your ultimate goal.

As you can see, knowing your audience and what they like allows you to set up a proper path to conversion that will lead to more people converting.

3. Make your offer clear to your audience

If you want your audience to complete different types of website conversions, you must make your offer clear and enticing for your audience. People want to know what they’re getting when they choose your business.

You must focus on how your offer benefits your audience.

How are you improving their lives or making their lives easier?

Make your offer clear and easy to understand. If you’re advertising an event, state what the event is and what your audience gets from it. Don’t give vague details or spend time talking about your company.

If you want people to convert, be clear about what they will get from converting. It will help your audience feel more informed and motivated to convert.

4. Use the right call to action (CTA)

Calls to action (CTAs) play a fundamental role in getting people to meet your conversion goals. CTAs guide your audience towards the next step and get them to take action. With all the types of website conversions, you must use an enticing CTA to get people to take action.

If you were running an event and wanted people to sign up, for example, a generic CTA like “Sign up” isn’t going to catch your audience’s attention. They’re not going to feel excited to sign up for your event.

Instead, a CTA like “Sign up to meet new people today!” is more enticing. It gets people excited and makes them more likely to follow through on your conversion goals.

Set up different types of website conversions today

With so many types of website conversions available to your business, it’s difficult to know where to start and how to set them up successfully. If you aren’t sure how to get started, our team at WebFX can help.

We have over a decade of experience creating campaigns with different types of website conversions that get people to convert. In the past five years, we’ve driven over $1.5 billion in sales and over 4.6 million leads for our clients. Whether your goal is to earn more sales, gain subscribers, or have more leads submit forms, we’ve got you covered.

To start setting up different types of website conversions for your business, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist.

The post Going Beyond Sales: 7 Types of Website Conversions to Optimize for on Your Website appeared first on WebFX Blog.

Community News: Latest PECL Releases (01.28.2020)

Latest PECL Releases:

• zip 1.16.0
  - fix #78641 addGlob can modify given remove_path value
  • add ZipArchive::CM_LZMA2 constant (since libzip 1.6.0)
  • add ZipArchive::setMtimeName and ZipArchive::setMtimeIndex
  • add ZipArchive::LIBZIP_VERSION constant
• datadog_trace 0.38.0
  ### Added - Official support for PHP 7.4 #723 - Tools to measure memory overhead #718

  Changed

  • Move Laravel to sanboxed api #700
  • Remove the sandbox API for PHP 5.4 #719
  • Dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 or BSD3 #727

  Fixed

  • README reference to RELEASING.md was removed #720 (thanks @v1v!)
  • MessagePack serialization with a reference #730
• uploadprogress 1.1.2
  - PHP 8 compatibility; this now builds on PHP 5, PHP 7, and PHP 8
• uploadprogress 1.1.1
  - Mark maximum PHP version as 8.0.0; this will not build on PHP 8
• uploadprogress 1.1.0
  - PHP 7 compatibility
• phalcon 4.0.3
  Full changelog can be found at: https://github.com/phalcon/cphalcon/blob/master/CHANGELOG-4.0.md

  [4.0.3]

  Fixed

  • Fixed PhalconDbAdapterPdoMysql Tinyint(1) is handled as boolean under MySql #14708
  • Fixed PhalconMvcViewEngineVolt to produce the correct order of variables for the join filter #14771
  • Fixed PhalconStorageAdapterStream::getKeys() bug in the absence of a directory with a prefix name #14725, #14721
  • Fixed PhalconDebug::onUncaughtException Should accept Throwable instead of Exception as an argument #14738
  • Fixed PhalconValidationValidatorFactory Should return PhalconValidationValidatorInterface 14749
  • Fixed PhalconMvcModelBinder to now correctly call has and set on the cache object #14743
  • Fixed PhalconSessionAdapterStream and PhalconStorageAdapterStream to correctly handle simultaneous read/write #14694
  • Fixed PhalconConfigConfigFactory to always add the correct extension #14756
• gRPC 1.27.0RC1
  - gRPC Core 1.27.0 update
• hprose 1.7.0
  Add TagHeader for Hprose 3.0.
• igbinary 3.1.2
  * Speed up object, array, reference, and string serialization. * Speed up unserializing integers between 0 and 65535 (as values and array keys). * Speed up unserializing objects with declared properties.

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The post Get 35+ Free Business Apps with Bitrix24 <span class="sponsored_text">Sponsored</span> appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Community News: Latest PEAR Releases (01.27.2020)

Latest PEAR Releases:

• Mail_Mime 1.10.5
  

Discovering the Freedoms of Freelance

One of the more entertaining parts of being a freelance web designer is hearing all the different assumptions people have about your job. And, having spent approximately half my life as one, I think I’ve heard them all.

Among the greatest hits: “If you get tired of working, you can go watch TV.”; “Wow, so I bet you could hit the golf course every day.”; “Life without a boss!”; “Working at home must be so exciting!” – I could go on, but you get the idea.

The common thread is that they all relate to a perceived freedom. And you can’t blame them, since freedom is one of the big selling-points of this career.

Yet, that’s not really the type of freedom I’ve experienced. It got me thinking about the realities and how they differ from the perceptions. Just what type of freedom comes with freelancing? And, what are the costs and limitations?

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The Freedom of a Personalized Work Environment

Freelancing provides us with the opportunity to work where, when and how we want. That means, if you want to work nights on the beach, you can. Not necessarily realistic, but certainly possible.

In my view, this is the biggest benefit. I’ve set up a home office, work in a (fairly) private environment and do something I enjoy every day. This is not the same experience as, say, working in a traditional office with a roomful of colleagues.

This has allowed me to spend more time with my daughter. It’s helped me to reach a higher level of discipline than I thought I was capable of. And, I’ve had the chance to experiment with how and when I work. Just as important, I can listen to loud music without a word of complaint!

Still, there is a cost. It takes some sacrifice (and maybe a little luck) to do things your way. If you want work odd hours, for example, you’ll need clients who are willing to go along. That may mean severely limiting yourself at first, or caving in and working “normal” hours until the right opportunity comes along.

The Freedom to Choose the Right Projects

Every web designer has their own ideals when it comes to projects. There are certain price points, industries and subjects that appeal to us. The great thing is that we can decide these things for ourselves, then pursue the projects that match our ideals.

I can attest that being picky about who I work with has been a great stress reducer. Don’t get me wrong – there’s still stress. But it’s not from feeling stuck or working on projects I don’t like.

The only caveat is that it’s not always easy to determine just what types of clients and projects you want to work with. This is especially the case when you first start out as a freelancer.

So, perhaps this freedom is one earned through experience. The more projects you work on, the more you’ll learn about your own preferences. From there, you’ll have a better sense of what fits.

In addition, it also requires a certain financial comfort level in your business. It’s easier to say “no” to a client outside of your niche when you have enough work to keep food on the table.

The Freedom to Use Our Favorite Tools

Among the most compelling reasons to go freelance is that you aren’t chained to a specific tool or process. One of most frustrating aspects of previous jobs I had was being told what I could or couldn’t use. Not to mention being stuck on a computer from the (internet) stone age.

Running my own business has allowed me to choose the hardware and software that helps me get things done. No, I can’t afford everything I want. But I can work within whatever limitations I have to make the most out of each project.

Plus, I can use tools that I believe in when working with clients. Can you imagine having to sell a client on a CMS you don’t like or trust? Even worse, imagine forcing outdated solutions on them. This is an area where corporate mandates can hurt more than they help.

The cost here is in the responsibility that comes with making such decisions. If something turns out to be a disaster, you might not have an easy scapegoat. Oh, well. That’s one advantage of working for someone else!

It’s About Making Your Own Choices

In all, the overarching freedom of being a freelancer is the ability to decide for yourself. So, in a funny way, the assumptions others have about us aren’t completely wrong. The reality is just more nuanced.

Yes, we can choose to watch TV or abandon work for a tee time. But those choices have consequences. Do these things too often and you’re likely to be unemployed.

To be a successful freelance web designer, it takes the courage to make your own decisions and deal with what comes next. The freedom merely lies in being the one who gets to steer the ship.

The post Discovering the Freedoms of Freelance appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.