Artbees Blog

As a senior template designer at Artbees Themes and also just from the years of freelancing and dabbling with different methods of design, I’ve picked up a checklist, if you will, of points I sure wish I knew beforehand. Now having learned the ins and outs of designing for WordPress, I’ve been able to combine my knowledge of design principles with the unique aspects of our themes.

This is no secret to most of us in the digital marketing sector; in the last five years there’s been a drastic change. People’s device of choice has gone from their desktop to their mobile phone, the majority of which are smartphones.

Just last week in the Artbees hive, we barrelled right on past 100 and hit 110 templates that we now offer to our users. Having surpassed that goal we set just about a year ago, it was a surreal moment for us. Though to be honest, it was a bit anticlimactic as we briefly paused to do a celebratory jig before quickly getting back to work on the next batch of new templates.

User experience in web design and psychology aren’t often so readily considered to connect to each other. Even ask a group of well-seasoned web designers and most will tell you they never had to take any user experience courses that incorporated psychological and cognitive principles. Though if you took a few moments to scan through some introductory descriptions of human perception and cognition, it would be immediately clear how having a deeper understanding of psychology could dramatically improve your approach to designing a results-oriented website.

We’ve recently discovered a blind spot of ours. Despite many of our customers being photographers, we haven’t specifically addressed this niche in any of our posts. So we did some digging and started talking with many of our customers who use our themes to showcase their photography asking them a number of questions to better understand what considerations they take into account when building a photography website. Well, when we started going through their responses, boy oh boy, were we surprised.

In previous posts we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the strategies used by many web design and digital marketing agencies during the production part of their projects. From how to build websites for nonprofits and maximize productivity to the ins and outs of being a freelancer and increasing your clients SEO, we’ve tried to provide best practices using the experience and expertise of our users. Though what about that part before the project even starts?

Think about it, whether you’re looking for a local theater, where to find art supplies or an architect to help you start those renovations, where’s the first place you turn to? The web! If that’s the case, then why should it be any different when people are looking for you?

Time and time again, you’ve heard from your peers and come across forums emphasizing the significance of increasing SEO optimization as an integral consideration to your marketing approach. With the majority, if not all, of your prospective customers using the web to research solutions and services you’re offering, making it easier for search engines to easily detect what, where and how you’re offering those services will in turn guide those customers right to your site!

Being a web or graphic design freelancer can sometimes be a double-edged sword. In one respect, being a freelancer can allow you to get paid to explore your creative passions, give you flexibility in planning when and where you work, and allows you to create your own processes that suite your productivity best. On the flipside, whether you’re working as a freelancing web or graphic designer full-time or in your spare time, there are definitely some challenges you may face.