It’s not the first time we write about skeuomorphism. You’ve probably read our recent article about skeuomorphic websites and applications and we’ve also shared our infographics on skeuomorphism with you, but today we’d like to focus on a special type of skeuomorphism, called Audio Skeuomorphism. Actually, we’d like to point out that the skeuomorphic trend is not limited to visual imitation, and to illustrate this we want to show you some beautiful audio skeuomorphic websites.
So, there are two types of skeuomorphism: a visual skeuomorphism and an audio skeuomorphism. If you visit iconceptmedia.com, a perfect example of visual skeuomorphism, you’ll see that this site’s design emulates a pinboard. A cork background, sheets of paper and pins, all that was necessary in the original pinboard, became ornamental in the design of iconceptmedia.com. And if you go to an audio skeuomorphic website, you’ll see the following: the sound that was necessary in the original device being emulated becomes an additional feature of this site. And the primary benefit of this feature is that it makes the whole website not only look, but also sound as its real-world equivalent. For example, the design of patfallonmagic.com emulates a book and when you flip through the pages of the site you hear the sound of turning pages.
Now let us take you through 15 beautiful websites which are stunning examples of audio skeuomorphism.
More than likely, you’ve already seen cheeseandburger.com as it has been featured in many design galleries, but the site perfectly fits our list of audio skeuomorphic websites because every time you turn the page to read about a new cheeseburger you hear a realistic “paper” sound.
Bornwithdesign.com is another example of a website following the audio skeuomorphic trend. Want to know what the site holds for you? At first, you’ll hear a timer ticking and then whatever page you’re on you’ll be excited by a special audio skeuomorphic element. For example, on the homepage you’ll see a contraceptive and every time you “touch” it you’ll hear it rustle. Then you can navigate to the Solutions page and when you ouse over the coins you’ll hear the ring of coins, and if you “look through” a notebook on this page you’ll hear the sound of flipping pages. Actually, the whole site is built in the best traditions of skeuomorphism and realism.
The good news is you have a great website but the bad news is your website is not as famous as Apple or Microsoft. Being Microsoft or Apple has its own perks. People tend to trust these big brands blindly and unlike smaller brands, these big corporate honchos do not have to face any such credibility issues. Since most of us are not that lucky, we have an uphill battle ahead when it comes to establishing credibility online that will eventually help us see a spike in the conversion rate.
Believe it or not, establishing credibility online is not rocket science. All you need to do is to identify the trust factors that your website is missing out on. Here in this article, we are going to give a roundup of factors that can make or break fate of an organization:
Why Trust is so Important?
Since your website is the first point of contact, every attempt should be made to make your brand appear trustworthy. Unless and until your website looks and feel reliable, people are not going to spend their hard earned money on your website. Moreover, you simply cannot buy trust of your targeted audience by cutting down on the profit margin. It is a poor marketing tactic that rarely works. If the ‘Lady Luck’ is not on your side, the credibility of your brand may take a serious beating in some worst cases.
Do you know why this type of marketing effort fails? Simply because it lacks trust. People will treat it as an attempt to deceive them by offering something worthless for cheap. As your brand lacks both visibility and credibility, chances are that people might not fall prey to this type of marketing gimmick. So, rather than wasting your time with these types of marketing gimmicks, you need to get your gloves on to establish a strong presence and bolster credibility of your website. Here is how to do it:
Russian Brand Marytrufel.ru has a made it a point by featuring Contact Details right at the top of the website.
Prominent Contact Details: You need to make sure that people can get in touch with your brand easily. Link to ‘Contact Us’ page should be placed prominently on the home page and preferably on all other pages too. It gives an immense boost to the credibility factor. Websites with no contact details are less likely to fare well as visitors unlikely to put their trust in them. If possible, try to feature address at the footer section and Contact no at the header section of the site. This will have a far reaching impact on the targeted audience.
Are we all gradually becoming multi-taskers in this tech-geek world? (I assume YES). Nowadays, it is not surprising to research your favourite food on your desktop or laptop and book a restaurant on your tablet or Smartphone. Therefore, as a result of this device-happy culture, websites are offering a seamless experience to make things simpler for us. This experience indicates that the web developers are putting more effort to the trends which can acclimate naturally to every device we use.
Here lies the importance of responsive design. However, one hardly thinks about what goes ‘behind the scene’. The principles and the rules for creating every responsive image are worth sharing with the readers. They must know how the images are made responsive to every device in use today. If you are assuming that building responsive images require complex techniques then you are wrong. Well, reading this blog post will give you a comprehensive picture of the principle behind every responsive image.
Let us first begin with the important strategies behind responsive images:
Providing a method to override resized images as required for art direction:
One of the most important uses of responsive images is the ability to provide different resolutions of images as per the size the image is used on the page at a specific viewport size. This is known as resolution switching use case. As the web developers need to create different versions of a particular image to effectively communicate through different screen resolution and pixel densities thus they use the technique of resolution switching. For instance, if the screen is large, a large image with more information can be shown, on the contrary, if the screen is small, the images can be scaled down to fit the screen size.
In some cases, simply resizing an image is not sufficient. A smaller or larger version of an image becomes unrecognisable. This is known as art direction use case. Art direction is also used for images that contain the combination of text with photography. In such a situation art direction is needed to make both the text and the photography visible on any screen sizes.
Today we are having a conversation with David Henzel, partner and VP of Marketing at NetDNA – the most innovative and awesome Content Delivery Network service provider.
David calls himself a “serial entrepreneur” in the online space (even though he considers this term kinda clichéd) and has more than 10 years of industry experience in Internet marketing and SEO expertise to back it all up. Before joining NetDNA/MaxCDN, David was a consultant for businesses in Europe and tinkered with eCommerce solutions of his own. Later he understood that he can do much more, but not in the Old World, so he moved across Atlantics and rooted in New York where he chases his American dream.
So let’s listed to David, quite so you’ll get a lot of useful & interesting information from his answers.
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Lilian: In your own experience, what activities have you found most conducive to your growth as a “serial entrepreneur”?
David: There have been so many factors in my life that have led me on my path to become an entrepreneur and so many people that have helped and influenced me whom I can’t thank enough. But when I think about it, there are four main thoughts:
Passion: The only way to stay mentally sane while working crazy hours + weekends and all staying on top of all these hyper focused projects is to really love what you are doing. The most conducive concept that has helped me in business is the love for people, the passion for what I am doing, and being a personal development geek. I would recommend everyone to read the works of Napoleon Hill’s as well as Zen to Done, by Leo Babauta. A very important, but perhaps overused insight: “If you love your job, you do not work a single hour in your life”
David: By the way, I am not the biggest fan of this word “serial entrepreneur”, I think it is a bit overused. Yet a lot entrepreneurs tend to have the “entrepreneurial ADD” (Attention Deficit Disorder) which drives them to always look for the new thing, the next thing, the fresh challenge to build something bigger, or solving another problem. It is that constant drive pushing them forward which likely results in various Enterprises 
People: When you think about it, it is always about people.. the people in your team, your partners, your understanding / supporting wife or partner, the people whose problem you are solving (your customers), the people that help you get things off the ground, or the people that are opening doors for you by making important intros etc. There is never a one man show.
Habits: Our habits are the key to extreme success and also to big time failure. It really depends which habits and routines you cultivate. Once you have a positive habit down, i.e. working out every day, getting up at 5:30 every morning or checking your marketing metrics religiously, it does not require any effort. Book Tip: The Power of Habit
Networking: It is extremely powerful to surround yourself with the right people and connect with them. You will find these people at conferences, trade shows, meetups, web forums, etc. You will be most successful if you can figure out early on how you can provide value to them and vice versa.
TIP: My favorite tool to keep in touch with the vast amount of people that I meet in business and personal is ming.ly. It’s slogan is taking the “work” out of net”work”ing; and it really does.
I just realized that this was a pretty long answer, I promise to keep the next ones shorter
The summer is right around the corner, and we thought there is no better way to finish the spring season than by providing a huge discount on the products you love. It’s time to please you guys with a tasty deal, and here it is! During the entire week, starting May 20 till May 28, you all have a chance to purchase ANY of the awesome Flash CMS Templates with a HUGE 50% discount! With this promo, you’ll be able to save around $120 on each template – that’s a lot of money!
Sounds great, huh? So, go ahead and use this amazing offer right now. Don’t miss the chance to get a versatile template of highest functionality with a bunch of great tools and options for customizing and running a successful search engine- and mobile friendly website. All Flash CMS templates are actually complete websites with the integrated control panel for easy website development. The collection counts just under 500 complete designs in a variety of categories.
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The history of movies started in 1880s when the first movie camera was invented. In those years movies were exhibited as a carnival novelty and extremely important tool for communication and entertainment…so they remained due date. Only there is one ‘BUT’…back in those days movies were some sort of a privilege and today everyone may have a movie uploaded onto smartphone, and even not a single one.
Movies found their way in our daily life we watch sitcoms while cooking, eating or doing anything else. And quite recently movies found their way into website design, not quite movies but some short video clips that play on when you load this or that page. These clips cover the whole background from to side of your screen. An .mp4 optimized video with continuous playback creates an outstanding effect and captures the attention of visitors for a long time, in case there is something worth watching.
This design technique captures minds and souls of users and designers becoming one of the most popular trends of 2013. Todays blog post reminds some sort of a Short Film Festival. Grab your popcorn, take a comfy seat and have a pleasant viewing.
Please note: the screenshots may not reflect the effect produced by the video itself, you’re welcome to click through the examples.
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Are you using polls in your blog posts?
Due to numerous technological solutions we can add polls to blog posts in a few mouse clicks. Polls work great when we need to engage users and do some additional actions. Polls are great complement to any blog post since you can get more info from your users (not everyone of them is willing to write a comment) all they need to do is to tick corresponding line in the poll.
There is a number of solutions to create online polls. The easiest way is Google Drive, its functionality allows you create polls in a few minutes. All that remains is to copy the embed code and paste into the blog post, that’s it.
But if you’re engaged with WordPress there are dozens of cool plugins to create cool polls. Things are now much easier and often just require the click of a button from your blog editor, a minute or two of customization and then clicking another button to insert a poll. Other methods usually require a short code generated by the plugin, which is just as easy. So let’s take a look at 18 awesome plugins that make adding polls to your easy and worthwhile. Here they are.
fVote
Ever needed a voting plugin which acts like a question matrix? Here is your solution. You don’t need any options in the backend and you can add the poll to any post or page.
Hot or Not
Host Hot or Not popularity contests on your site and allow your visitors to rate their favorite things! The plugin engages your visitors attention and hooks them on your site, as long as you have fun content to serve them!
As the heart is an important aspect of the human body so is the Shopping Cart, the heart of eCommerce platform. Magento Shopping Cart is the interface between an online website and its infrastructure. This software allows your consumers to choose merchandise, review their choice, make necessary addition or modification and finally purchase the merchandise. Isn’t this piece of software a great solution for your eCommerce venture? Since its discovery in 2008, the expansion of Magento Shopping Cart has proved to be one of the dominant interactive web application developments with dynamic functionalities.
Magento Shopping Cart assists the online entrepreneur to run a smooth web store functioning. So, how about customizing this influential software? (I am sure; you are quite excited with this idea). Well, you must be wondering ‘oh! That’s easy; I can change it right now’ but somehow end up spending more time than expected in the process. Let me inform you that changing ‘Shopping Cart’ to ‘Shopping bag’ needs a lot of effort. However, it is not as difficult as it sounds.
Before providing an insight into the custom Shopping Cart, I want to quickly share my experience while integrating customized Shopping Cart in my online store.
‘As I was a little hesitant to develop my own shopping cart, a few striking features completely changed my outlook. Customizing my Magento Shopping Cart saved my time while I had custom requirements. The new cart is flexible and is easy to extend. It has allowed me to directly import modules from my existing code library without implementing any dual template for the cart as well as custom website.’
The main aim of customized Shopping Cart is simply to augment the rate of conversions. Just think about this- how many of your conversions have come directly from your website and how many from other websites directly in the Shopping Cart? You will observe that most of the purchase leads will enter directly into your Shopping Cart. So why not integrate it with your online website? You must provide your consumer to view certain important features like a ‘CONTACT’ button or a visible link to the ‘HOMEPAGE’.
By this time, you must be already planning to use your store logo and images to enhance your customer experience while they purchase your products. Therefore, let me help you to go through the steps required to personalize your Magento Shopping Cart.
How many stock photography resources are there? Hundreds? Thousands? Got to be even more. But if we take most popular and trustworthy repositories we’ll see that all images they feature are practically the same and can be called raw. Images presented there are good for blending blog posts or as sources for some collages. But for creating website designs they do not really fit.
When you see website with an image like the one featured below? What’s the first thing that comes up your mind? Probably designer who created this website had enough imagination to add stock image without editing it somehow. Looks pretty boring, doesn’t it?
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Let’s find some more boring examples. Happy customer service representative: a beautiful girl with a snow-white smile…
I will not dispute the fact that there are such girls in call centers, but as a rule for one beauty there fall ten guys in checkered shirt with two weeks’ stubble on their faces. In most cases it’s better to use a still from some widely-known movie but not to use one face for multiple companies.
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The next stylish theme from our young talented designer Ivy Green is waiting for you, guys. Last week we featured her first work – free theme for spa salon, and today the fresh goodie is ready. Please welcome Free Website Template that is good to be used for any type of cafe and restaurant site.
Green color dominates in this tricolor design, looking sappy and setting up a positive tone. It is associated with natural and healthy food – that is a good advertising for a restaurant. Easy on the eye, this design features everything you need to promote your place to the visitors. Slider in the top works up an appetite with the high resolution images that look so appealing, neat typography in the headers and tiny buttons in coral red focus attention on the blocks of information. Tasty looking “best choice” section invites the viewers to try some of the delicious dishes. Easy navigation and overall pleasant look make this theme a perfect fit for online restaurant presence. Check out free template live demo to see this theme in live action.
If you like this theme, feel free to get it and say a warm welcome to your clients online.
Free Website Template for Restaurant Site:
To download the whole package of this template, visit the Free Website Template for Restaurant Site download page at TemplateMonster and type an email address that you want the free template package to be delivered to (don’t forget to uncheck the newsletter subscription checkbox in case you’re already subscribed, otherwise you may not be able to download the zip file). Feel free to use this template for your business, but you cannot resell it as a template.
Download Free Website Template for Restaurant Site with PSD files (25,4MB)
IMPORTANT NOTICE:TemplateMonster does not provide support services on free templates – including this one. We only provide support for the products that are being purchased from TemplateMonster. Our free templates are produced according to the latest web standards and we’ve been trying to make the process of working with them as easy as possible, so for people with minimum web development experience it should be easy to work with them. However, if you don’t have any experience, we recommend you to refer to the tutorials or community forums on how to work with platforms that each respective template is made with, or to hire someone to do the job for you.
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