Archive for July, 2011
Today we feel an extreme urgency to introduce you a rundown of the most robust, advanced and easily customizable templates for VirtueMart eCommerce shopping cart. VirtueMart Templates are Joomla eCommerce designs based on popular VirtueMart component.
TemplateMonster always stays tuned for the new system updates and our professionals try to create our VirtueMart Templates in accordance with the latest versions. In our templates collection you can find a great number of themes for websites which can suit every taste and fit all requirements of the most demanding customers. Following themes along with the rest of the templates from our collection come with powerful configuration features and stylish layouts for the best experience of your web shops. The biggest benefit to this is that you can easily set up and manage these themes to create attractive live product offering and have a fully-featured online store seamlessly functioning.
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Gifts Online Store VirtueMart Template
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T-Shirts Online Store VirtueMart Template
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Spice Store VirtueMart Template
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A lot of you might have noticed that web developers tend to use large background images for their websites during the past couple of years. One of the reasons is the development of Internet connection – loading large images is no longer a rare thing. Plus, there’s no need to explain that large images are impressive and portray the website message brighter. You may see the content, headings and various functions placed on top of the large background, often on half-transparent blocks. Large images may add some special feeling of contrast and make your website stand out from a range of the similar ones. With large background pics you may make your site layout appealing and trendy as well as display the offered products or services more vividly.
What websites usually implement large background images? Predominantly these are websites running hotel, traveling, restaurant, design, photography and art businesses. Large images seem to be more suitable for the pages with the less complex structure and minor content. They are particularly great for the websites serving as business cards.
The large backgrounds imply not only photos but also illustrations, animations or even videos. Photos and illustrations are far more popular, though some well-thought animation may also look impressive. We will talk about the static large background images that make the visitors stay longer on your website. The trend of using large backgrounds is irresistible and this trend is not going anywhere anytime soon, so if you need an awesome modern website feel free to make use of it.
General Types of Large Background Images
We discern the following types of Large Background Images:
- A large image with a fixed positioning like in the examples below:
- A full size set up image that doesn’t fade into the background color.
Upstruct.com
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Cpeople.ru
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Very few components have a more crucial impact on your site UX than navigation choices. As UX describes the overall experience and satisfaction a user has when interacting with your website, try to make it easy for them to find the information they likely want to know. In the process of formulating website navigation system, utilize a navigation type that is most appropriate for your content, that supports users’ behavior and enables them to seamlessly get to the key areas of your website. Often, site navigations fail because web designers don’t realize they were designing for the wrong navigation type. Luckily, there is a huge number of other navigation approaches that could be more suitable to help people easily browse your site and retrieve information related to the site’s topical content. Now we’ll look into the usability concerns of the main navigation options.
- When you are working with a complex content, consider setting up a faceted navigation with multiple filters to get the desired and customized information. That is a great value of improving findability as it provides users with visible options for narrowing or refining their broad query to a smaller range of custom results.
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- Sitemap approach can be the most search-engine friendly approach as it lets search engines find all the pages within your website. Resembling a menu tree with bullets in nested levels or organizational charts, this option allows users to link from every page of your site to every other page. You simply list all the sections in one place and this gives users a shorter path to the different areas of your website.
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- For websites with large number of pages, you may as well incorporate index navigation approach. Such sorting system with alphabetical listing or chronological layout is being usually displayed a line down to simplify browsing the entire site’s list of topic pages.
- As for the search navigation option, it is very helpful for large websites and can solve the most complex navigation problems. Include search box on every page at the same location to enable visitors easily search within your website.
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- Top horizontal bar navigation is used to place text/icon links and clearly separate them in one row. This navigation system is widely adopted because most views start out showing the top area, plus such option maximizes the horizontal space and provides simple and effective visual context of the site content structure. When paired with dropdown sub-navigation, the top horizontal bar navigation can hold more links and push essential content vertically downward.
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- You can also use vertical bars in text navigations for visual separating unrelated groups of links. Instead of dividing each navigation link, vertical bars put a strong emphasis on the related groupings marking them at the end.
- What about navigation pointer, which is an isosceles triangle that is center aligned with the text link, it is a good practice to use this tool when you need to offer the viewers clear visual feedback in the navigation. In addition, this technique gives an incredible amount of focus to help users see where they are.
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You guys probably noticed when visiting Facebook fan pages that sometimes the content is hidden from users who have not yet liked this page. Wondering how to hide content like this on your Facebook fan pages? We have the solution to tackle this interesting issue as TemplateMonster’s developers started producing Facebook Reveal Tab Templates with today’s fresh HTML5-animated Facebook reveal tab template. These HTML5 animated designs function as short Facebook promo intros that eclipse the main content, but with some creativity involved.
Hiding content creates really hard-to-skip incentive for visitors to like your page to get the hidden content. In other words, Facebook Reveal Template solution we’ve released today can be a very effective tool of motivating viewers to become fans of your page. Because what they initially see is a content of a non-fan, scarcely informative however made to trigger the curiously, once however they click the ‘Like’ button, Facebook fan page switches to a new layout with fans-only content revealed in exchange for a new fan. As you can see, this can be done pretty easily using our HTML5-based Facebook Reveal Tab Template – all you need is a little knowledge of HTML. Check out and share your opinion on this new product in our comments section.
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Today’s good news is that TemplateMonster has added some extra special offers you can choose in addition to what you’ve purchased at TemplateMonster.
Now we’re very pleased to help you uncover and implement new qualified services and cost-efficient pricing opportunities. So, when you added the product to the shopping cart, before you check out we’ll offer you additional services that if chosen will simply be added to your total. If you want to purchase any of these extra options, simply click the button next to a certain offer to add it to your order. Yet what exact benefits will you receive upon choosing them, let us explain.
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Copyright Protection Plan from Guardlex.com
The first one is about Guardlex.com service. This is an online anti-piracy service allowing intellectual property owners to stop illegal distribution of their products or unauthorized usage of their trademarks. To accomplish this, Guardlex.com provides a number of very flexible and affordable protection plans ranging from Basic (website design or single design product protection), Advanced (software, articles, photos, etc. protection), and ending up with the Pro-Active (for huge companies that provide wide range of products). Now you can exclusively order a basic plan of copyrighted items protection program from Guardlex.com while purchasing any of our products. In this case the price will be reduced significantly for you to able to save a whole lot of money with this offer. If you’re creative developers who produce various design products, try out this perfect solution to fight back piracy, design plagiarism, or any other copyright infringement of the unique content you have on your websites.
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Writing Serivces for 5 Website Pages from eCopyWriters.com
for as low as $50
Another offer touches upon professional website copywriting services. TemplateMonster currently cooperates with eCopyWriters.com – a company that embraces thousands of freelance copywriters to produce quality content for your website, blog, or eCommerce site. eCopyWriters.com covers a broad range of industries (consumer products, technology, advertising & marketing, financials, etc.) and copywriting services (SEO copywriting, editing, blogging, ghostwriting, web copywriting, press releases, and more), that is therefore an ideal solution for affiliate marketers, SEO agencies, eCommerce clients, and traditional public relation and advertising agencies. Now, if you place an order at TemplateMonster, you can save 80% the normal retail price ordering this excellent copywriting service. For as low as $50, you get 5 pages website content professionally written and fully edited by U.S.-based copywriter and originally certified by Copyscape. Take advantage of this great opportunity – the discounted offer is only valid for a limited-time period.
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Thus and so, the next time you’re making a purchase at TemplateMonster, consider which of these two services go along nicely with the main purpose of your project and order one that you find essential for your project development.
Let’s say “Stop!” to the boring designs with fade colors! The typical designs become too similar to each other and don’t attract the attention of your customers any more. Welcome the new product from our team of professional designers – Free Website Template with jQuery Slider and Typography. It is exactly what you need to bring a sense of effectiveness to your online agriculture project.
Its composition is oriented at the visual effectiveness and expressive typography elements support this idea. Everything is organized in the catchy way within this design in order to get the positive response from your visitors. As usual, you can find the jQuery slider in its header – the place where you can present your products and the ideas of your company. Using this free website template you will be able to customize it according to your needs and speed up the process of creating your online project. Before you start, don’t forget to check out free template live demo!
Free Website Template with jQuery Slider and Typography:
As usual, you can get this free website template in two ways: with PSD source files included and without them. Follow the link below and download HTML source files. To download this theme with PSD source files, visit the Free Website Template with jQuery Slider and Typography 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 with jQuery Slider and Typography with PSD files (8,32MB)
Download Free Website Template with jQuery Slider and Typography without PSD (867KB)
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.
Companies are always looking to grow their business by enhancing the relationship between businesses and customers. Email marketing, in this case, is a viable and cost-effective marketing tool that will help spread the word about your company. Whether you are to announce news or special promos, tell your subscribers about new products or services, or send out advertisements – with professional email marketing services you will have easy online access for creating, launching, and monitoring the results of these email campaigns.
For this reason, we found a number of different options that were created to suit different email marketing needs. The following is a list of the major email marketing tools and services capitalizing on the newest solutions – look through and review their key features, rates, and capabilities to evaluate which email marketing provider best suits your business. Using any of these services you will ensure the greatest return on investment as they are all developed to make email marketing easy and profitable for you.
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iContact
Free Trial – 30 days
Monthly Fee – starting at $10
iContact offers an extensive set of features to help you create and track a professional email marketing campaign for your business. This email marketing service couples many third-party add-ons, including WordPress, iPhone and iPod Touch, and Android mobile devices. As well it offers helpful customer support, 20+ email templates, statistic tool, reports services (though lacking some details on conversion rates), a powerful autoresponder feature which you can use to send your messages on a pre-determined time basis. You can try iContact free to send unlimited emails to 500 subscribers.
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Constant Contact
Free Trial – 60 days
Monthly Fee – starting $15
Constant Contact is easy-to-use email marketing software that boasts of strong features. This tool offers 400+ professional and flexible design templates, a handy system for adding and managing contacts, professional customer support, autoresponder, event marketing and online surveys for additional monthly fee. Pricing is monthly based on the number of contacts in a company’s email database; besides pre-pay discounts for longer commitments are available. In addition, Constant Contact has a very strong integration with PayPal and Amazon, there are however no reporting options for conversion tracking or Google Analytics, and only 1.7 MB of picture hosting.
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Manipulation is an essential part of our everyday life and business. Artful psychological techniques make us vulnerable and eager to follow suggestions or buy the advertised products. Online business is flourishing due to various mental shortcuts and persuasion tactics.
First and foremost, you are to analyze how clients use your website. You may make customer surveys, use heat maps and usability audits to track how users navigate around your website stores. These observations as well as selling tricks below will help you to understand and influence the audience behavior in order to increase conversion of your store.
Below you’ll find several effective Psychological Selling Maneuvers to apply and enhance your online shops. Learn how to recognize and implement manipulation in your business!
Use General Supermarket Psychology
Standard supermarket techniques are known to be the major tried-and-true strategy to be applied to online stores. You may increase profits and conversion by involving some basic marketing tricks like giving better positions to products with the highest profit level or place the items complimenting each other (like wine and cheese, slippers and pajamas) into one product category or on a single page while giving out search results. As for the proximity of complimentary products, you may locate them next to each other to pay the users attention to the products they may need.
This tactic will encourage customers to buy more items. Some techniques described below are also derived form the supermarket tricks.
Test Minor Tricks
Analyze your store users behavior by testing every single minor edit, such as changing the button or add color, content color and background, header images, location of calls to action and sales announcements. Google Website Optimiser is a free tool that is aimed at helping you to manage your testing easily.
Tricks with Promotions, Prices and Percentages
If we remember the Marketing experiments of Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, the majority of customers perceive the first price as an average standard. Meaning if we announce the sales as “15-30% off” we should know that people will think the most goods are 15% off, and only several items are 30% off. So it’s highly recommended to use the “up to” approach naming the headline “up to X% off” in order to cause appropriate reaction. By the way, have you ever noticed that the “up to” model sounds far more persuasive than “over ” model? If taking the dollar prices it’s better to inform the store visitors about the lowest price like “ From $15” that looks more appealing than “$15-$40”. But in case you use these tricky wordings you may want to make sure you have disclaimers and discount terms somewhere, and make them as clear as possible. Otherwise you may have problems with customers who just don’t get the concept, and having a page to refer them to is a good tool of proving that you’re right.
If your next design project involves some manipulation with typography, the following Photoshop tutorials are being listed to help you out in making awesome text effects. Using these thorough guides, you’ll be able to easily pick up some relevant skills and then seamlessly carve out very beautiful text effects. We’ve rounded only latest techniques so, even if you’re habitual of making high-end typography stuff, these Photoshop text effect tutorials are sure to assist you in your design creations – mainly because we compiled them carefully and selected only the best ones. Now unleash your creativity and try experimenting with these styles.
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Metal Text Under 12 O’clock Spot Light
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Create a Funny Wooden Type Treatment in Photoshop
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Want to design a website that will convey a sense of elegant tranquility and familiarity? You should indulge in a fair play of balance and proportion, since symmetry is a key technique to use if you want a balanced looking page. Overall symmetrical balance occurs when a composition is evenly distributed around a central vertical or horizontal axis. Being simpler than asymmetric forms, it can significantly enhance recognition of a website and is sure to recall its elegance. Basically, there are several types of symmetry, but the most basic are given further:
- Reflection Symmetry – has its central axis vertically or horizontally and is composed by design elements being centered and evenly spaced across either vertical or horizontal plane. Also known as bilateral symmetry, this form of design is mirroring and reflecting an element around a central axis.
- Rotational Symmetry – displays circular placement of object in a particular direction and at any angle or frequency. This symmetry type (also known as radial symmetry) involves a central point around which an object is rotated in equal degrees without any change.
- Translational Symmetry – refers to relocating of an object in any direction or at any distance while maintaining its general or exact orientation. Basically, it is a repeating pattern of identical elements that are equally spaced out along a line.
All these symmetry types should be tried out in your designs. To offer you enough food for imagination, we bring forth the best of our designs to showcase interesting and compositionally balanced examples. The following website templates particularly exhibit order and limitation. Having different symmetrical types strategically used within their layouts, they give a stable, consistent look with organized and neat design concepts. Right after the jump you’ll see how symmetry creates rhythm in designs and is used to show motion and dynamic action through a flat and static medium.
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ColorMoto Flash CMS Template
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Barry Johnson Photo Portfolio
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