MNO Creative Solutions

Switch to Gmail: The best Online Webmail!

2011-03-21T16:58:00.001-04:00

Switching email accounts can be painful. The idea of losing years of accumulated contacts and messages can sound daunting, to say the least. Luckily, switching to Gmail doesn’t mean you have to start totally fresh.

Back in 2009 we announced tools that let you import mail and contacts from other providers, such as AOL or Hotmail. Today we’re announcing the addition of fourteen more international domains to our list of supported email providers:

aol.com.br
hotmail.es
hotmail.it
hotmail.co.jp
Kimo.com
live.jp
yahoo.es
yahoo.cn
yahoo.com.cn
yahoo.com.hk
yahoo.com.sg
yahoo.com.tw
yahoo.co.jp
yahoo.it

We’ve also created a site, gmail.com/switch, with basic information and how and why you might want to switch to Gmail. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re already a Gmail user, but perhaps this link will be handy for friends and family.

We’re always looking for ways to make Gmail more useful -- both for existing users and new ones -- so, as always, we’d love to hear what you think!

Read more @ http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/switch-to-gmail.html

Follow us on twitter.com/MNOsolutions

2011-03-14T23:26:00.001-04:00

Online Marketing Tips

2011-02-26T19:03:00.006-05:00

Lately I've been using Constant Contact as my Email Marketing Tool and although I hate "JUNK EMAIL" this thing works. Here are some tips that they recommend:

Boost customer communication: Keep customers and prospects coming back with email newsletters. Email Marketing puts you in customers' inboxes. We'll help you avoid spam filters.
Amplify your message with Social Media: Use social media to reach customers and members — plus their fans, friends, and followers — on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. Put social media to work for your business.
Get a professional look: Design your Email Campaign with M&O. Call us today 305.403.3566 or email us @ info@mnosolutions.com
Target your customers directly: Increase the impact of your email newsletters by segmenting your email lists by customer interests. Sending relevant and targeted email marketing increases response rates.
Grow your business through referrals: Email newsletters are easy to forward. When your loyal customers forward your newsletters to their friends — you get new prospects. Increase your mailing list by putting our "Join My Mailing List" button on your website or Facebook page. Email marketing turns fans, friends, and followers into loyal customers.
See results immediately: Send email campaigns quickly and easily. See results with real-time email reports. Schedule email delivery for when people are most likely to check email, so you'll increase the likelihood they'll read it and take action.
Learn who opens, clicks, and forwards: Graphs and reports show your email marketing response rates. See who opens your emails, who forwards them to friends, and who clicks on which links. Learn what people are interested in, so you can tailor your content, boost responses, and grow your business.
Lower your marketing costs: Email marketing priced for small businesses — as low as $15/month! Send as many permission-based email newsletters as you want. No printing or postage costs, no envelopes to stuff, and no paper cuts!

Email Design by M&O
www.mnosolutions.com/emails.html

Call us today 305.403.3566
or email us @ info@mnosolutions.com

Stand out from the crowd? M&O can Help!

2011-02-18T09:34:00.000-05:00

Create your one-of-a-kind Business e-Card!

2011-02-14T20:00:00.000-05:00

Forget about your traditional greeting card and create your one-of-a-kind Business personalized e-Card for any occasion.

Advantages of business e-Cards over traditional greeting cards:

Branding: Get recognition and loyalty from your customers.
Environmental friendly: Nobody saves their greeting cards anymore. Don't waste paper! Save a tree! Let your customer know you care.
Business e-Cards are substantially more cost-effective than traditional greeting cards. Save on postage & paper!
Stand Out: Add animation, sound, links and create a WOW effect.

Call us today @ 305.403.3566 and get your one-of-a-kind e-Card
info@mnosolutions.com

Be Contrarian About Social Media

2011-01-19T18:22:00.000-05:00

Social media is a lasting fad. Yes, that’s a contradiction in terms, but it’s the new “internet” in that everyone wants to be on the bus when it gets there, but mostly they don’t really know where it’s going. It will obviously be around forever in some form, but the “irrational exuberance” is lemming-like.

As a business, the farthest you can safely go is to facilitate discussions about your brand, embracing a Libertarian philosophy of information, opinions, and engagement level. Business purposes that masquerade as personal authenticity are disingenuous and a violation of the authenticity consumers are increasingly longing for.

Read more @ http://parse.howdesign.com/business_development/rainmaking/be-contrarian-about-social-media/

by David C. Baker

What Is Social Media?

2011-01-11T16:45:00.000-05:00

Social Media is the present and future way of communicating, not only with your friends and family but also with your end consumer and suppliers. Social media is simply the medium for social interaction, is a group of Internet-based applications that allows you to communicate with your consumer directly.

The most common social media tools are: Blogs, Twitter and Facebook. These 3 can help you boost your business and the best of all... they are completely FREE!

Don’t Know How to Start Your Own Social Media Presence?
Don't worry, M&O will make you a social media expert. Our unique program offers you the possibility of not only registering into multiple Social media sites but also personalizing it in order for your business to attract more customers.

Call us today @ 305.403.3566 or email us @ info@mnosolutions.com and start communicating directly with your end customer!

TWITTER
The real meaning of the word Twitter is a high-pitched sound of a bird... but in today’s world Twitter is better known as social networking or a microblog service that allows you to send short text messages of 140 characters in length, called "tweets". Through this service you will be able to share brief news and information about your business with your followers in real time.

Visit M&O Twiite page to preview a sample: http://twitter.com/MNOsolutions

FACEBOOK
Facebook is the biggest social networking website, it's what revolutionized the Social Media world. Through Facebook your are able to connect with friends, family, business associates and end consumers. You will have access to their personal information, likes and dislikes; giving you the power to better market your products.

Why do you need a 'Facebook Page' for your business? Because over 100,000,000 users are already on it! Facebook will allow you to contact your audience directly and will make your website widely available for search engines to easily find you.

Visit M&O Facebook page to preview a sample: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MO-Creative-Solutions/167929085581

BLOG
A blog is a personal diary... the difference between a regular diary and a Blog is not only that it is published online, but people can add comments and interact with you or your business.

Why do you need a BLOG? Because it is another FREE way to connect to your audience. You can publish your thoughts or latest news, link it to interesting articles concerning your product or service and keep everybody updated without cluttering their inboxes with another email.

Visit M&O Blog page to preview a sample: http://mnosolutions.blogspot.com

Start Your New Year's resolutions Now!

2011-01-07T21:27:00.000-05:00

Get into Social Media... M&O can Help you!

What Is Social Media?

Social Media is the present and future way of communicating. It does not only serves the purpose of communicating with your friends and family; but also with your end consumers and colleagues. Social media is your ultimate tool for you to be in contact with your end consumer!

The most common Social Media tools are: Blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Theses 3 can help you boost your business and they are completely FREE!

You Don’t Know How to Start Your Own Social Media Presence?
Don't worry, M&O will take charge and will make you a Social Media expert. Our unique program offers you the possibility of not only registering into multiple Social Media sites; but also personalizing it in order to for your business to attract more consumers.

Call us today @ 305.403.3566 or email us @ info@mnosolutions.com and start communicating directly with your end consumers!

Merry X-Mas and Happy 2011!

2010-12-15T16:31:00.000-05:00

[ WANT AN E-CARD FOR YOUR COMPANY, CLICK HERE ]

Lay Back... and let M&O create your personalized holiday e-Card!

2010-11-30T15:19:00.000-05:00

[ ORDER NOW ]

Ecards: Animated $200 or Static $100 to see some sample please click here. Offer expires on 12/23/10. www.mnosolutions.com

How do you use Facebook for business?

2010-11-01T12:30:00.000-04:00

Facebook’s not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers.

Not using Facebook for business yet? Wondering where to start? Already on Facebook, but not sure if you’ve done everything right? Well look no further. Bookmark this article. It will be your comprehensive guide to using Facebook.

By the way, you’re not alone. There are still many business owners and marketers who don’t quite know where to start—they struggle to gain momentum and achieve measurable results from their efforts.

This post is designed to help you understand what Facebook can do for your business and lead you through a step-by-step process for getting started on building a compelling presence and optimizing your Facebook marketing.

Read more @ http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-101-business-guide/

What is twitter?

2010-10-25T12:30:00.000-04:00

Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.

Twitter for your Business

Twitter is a simple tool that helps connect businesses more meaningfully with the right audience at the right time.

Businesses and organizations of all shapes and sizes are now able to stay connected to their customers. It can be used to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your business. Customers can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that they’ve had a great—or disappointing—experience with your business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers they’ve selected to be notified of.

What is Google AdWords?

2010-10-18T15:00:00.000-04:00

With Google AdWords, you can create and run ads for your business, quickly and simply. Run your ads on Google and our advertising network -- no matter what your budget, you'll only pay when people click your ads.

AdWords ads are displayed along with search results when someone searches Google using one of your keywords. Ads appear under 'Sponsored links' in the side column of a search page, and may also appear in additional positions above the free search results. That way, you'll be advertising to an audience that's already interested in your business. You can also choose to display your ads on Display Network sites in the growing Google Network. And, you can choose the exact Display Network placements where you'd like your ad to appear, or you can let contextual targeting match your keywords to content.

You can choose from a variety of ad formats, including text, image, and video ads, and easily track your ad performance using the reports available in your account.

There's no minimum monthly charge with AdWords -- just a nominal activation fee.

What is Google Analytics?

2010-10-11T12:30:00.000-04:00

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service,currently in use at around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites.Another market share analysis claims that Google Analytics is used at around 49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites (as currently ranked by Alexa).

GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

I don't have a website. Can I still advertise with Google AdWords?

2010-10-09T20:35:00.000-04:00

To advertise with Google AdWords, you need to have a website that you want to promote.

If you don't have a website, M&O can help you create a new site in less than a week or you can easily create one for free using Google Sites. For a brief tutorial on using Google Sites, visit http://www.google.com/sites and click Watch Short Tutorial. You can also find questions to frequently asked questions at http://www.google.com/support/sites. (Note: This content may not be available in all languages.)

10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

2009-09-28T12:33:00.001-04:00

via Smashing Magazine by Dmitry Fadeyev on 9/24/09

Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites.

Form Labels Work Best Above The Field

A study by UX Matters found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. On many forms, labels are put to the left of the fields, creating a two-column layout; while this looks good, it’s not the easiest layout to use. Why is that? Because forms are generally vertically oriented; i.e. users fill the form from top to bottom. Users scan the form downwards as they go along. And following the label to the field below is easier than finding the field to the right of the label.

Positioning labels on the left also poses another problem: do you left-align or right-align the labels? Left-aligning makes the form scannable but disconnects the labels from the fields, making it difficult to see which label applies to which field. Right-aligning does the reverses: it makes for a good-looking but less scannable form. Labels above fields work best in most circumstances. The study also found that labels should not be bold, although this recommendation is not conclusive.

Users Focus On Faces

People instinctively notice other people right away when they come into view. On Web pages, we tend to focus on people’s faces and eyes, which gives marketers a good technique for attracting attention. But our attraction to people’s faces and eyes is only the beginning; it turns out we actually glance in the direction the person in the image is looking in.

Quality Of Design Is An Indicator Of Credibility

Various studies have been conducted to find out just what influences people’s perception of a website’s credibility:

Stanford-Makovsy Web Credibility Study 2002: Investigating What Makes Web Sites Credible Today
What Makes A Web Site Credible? A Report on a Large Quantitative Study
The Elements of Computer Credibility
Elements that Affect Web Credibility: Early Results from a Self-Report Study (Proceedings of ACM CHI 2000 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, v.2, New York: ACM Press)

We don’t know if Fever app is any good, but the sleek user interface and website make a great first impression.

One interesting finding of these studies is that users really do judge a book by its cover… or rather, a website by its design. Elements such as layout, consistency, typography, color and style all affect how users perceive your website and what kind of image you project. Your website should project not only a good image but also the right one for your audience.

Other factors that influence credibility are: the quality of the website’s content, amount of errors, rate of updates, ease of use and trustworthiness of authors.

Most Users Do Not Scroll

Jakob Nielsen’s study on how much users scroll (in Prioritizing Web Usability) revealed that only 23% of visitors scroll on their first visit to a website. This means that 77% of visitors won’t scroll; they’ll just view the content above the fold (i.e. the area of the page that is visible on the screen without scrolling down). What’s more, the percentage of users who scroll decreases with subsequent visits, with only 16% scrolling on their second visit. This data highlights just how important it is to place your key content on a prominent position, especially on landing pages.

This doesn’t mean you should cram everything in the upper area of the page, just that you should make the best use of that area. Crowding it with content will just make the content inaccessible; when the user sees too much information, they don’t know where to begin looking.

Basecamp makes great use of space. Above the fold (768 pixels high), it shows a large screenshot, tagline, value proposition, call to action, client list, videos and short feature list with images.

This is most important for the home page, where most new visitors will land. So provide the core essentials there:

Name of the website,
Value proposition of the website (i.e. what benefit users will get from using it),
Navigation for the main sections of the website that are relevant to the user.

However, users’ habits have significantly changed since then. Recent studies prove that users are quite comfortable with scrolling and in some situations they are willing to scroll to the bottom of the page. Many users are more comfortable with scrolling than with a pagination, and for many users the most important information of the page isn’t necessarily placed “above the fold” (which is because of the variety of available display resolutions a quite outdated, deprecated term). So it is a good idea to divide your layout into sections for easy scanning, separating them with a lot of white space.

For further information please take a look at the articles Unfolding the fold (Clicktale), Paging VS Scrolling (Wichita University – SURL), Blasting the Myth of the Fold (Boxes and Arrows). (thanks, Fred Leuck).

Blue Is The Best Color For Links

While giving your website a unique design is great, when it comes to usability, doing what everyone else is doing is best. Follow conventions, because when people visit a new website, the first place they look for things are in the places where they found them on most other websites; they tap into their experience to make sense of this new content. This is known as usage patterns. People expect certain things to be the same, such as link colors, the location of the website’s logo, the behavior of tabbed navigation and so on.

Google keeps all links on its websites blue for a reason: the color is familiar to most users, which makes it easy to locate.

What color should your links be? The first consideration is contrast: links have to be dark (or light) enough to contrast with the background color. Secondly, they should stand out from the color of the rest of the text; so, no black links with black text. And finally, research shows (Van Schaik and Ling) that if usability if your priority, sticking to blue for links is best. The browser’s default link color is blue, so people expect it. Choosing a different color is by no means a problem, but it may affect the speed with which users find it.

The Ideal Search Box Is 27-Characters Wide

What’s the ideal width of a search box? Is there such a thing? Jakob Nielsen performed a usability study on the length of search queries in website search boxes (Prioritizing Web Usability). It turns out that most of today’s search boxes are too short. The problem with short boxes is that even though you can type out a long query, only a portion of the text will be visible at a time, making it difficult to review or edit what you’ve typed.

The study found that the average search box is 18-characters wide. The data showed that 27% of queries were too long to fit into it. Extending the box to 27 characters would accommodate 90% of queries. Remember, you can set widths using ems, not just pixels and points. One em is the width and height of one “m” character (using whatever font size a website is set to). So, use this measure to scale the width of the text input field to 27-characters wide.

In general, search boxes are better too wide than too short, so that users can quickly review, verify and submit the query. This guideline is very simple but unfortunately too often dismissed or ignored. Some padding in the input field can also improve the design and user experience.

White Space Improves Comprehension

Most designers know the value of white space, which is the empty space between paragraphs, pictures, buttons and other items on the page. White space de-clutters a page by giving items room to breathe. We can also group items together by decreasing the space between them and increasing the space between them and other items on the page. This is important for showing relationships between items (e.g. showing that this button applies to this set of items) and building a hierarchy of elements on the page.

Notice the big content margin, padding and paragraph spacing on The Netsetter. All that space makes the content easy and comfortable to read.

White space also makes content more readable. A study (Lin, 2004) found that good use of white space between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increases comprehension by almost 20%. Readers find it easier to focus on and process generously spaced content.

In fact, according to Chaperro, Shaikh and Baker, the layout on a Web page (including white space, headers, indentation and figures) may not measurably influence performance but does influence user satisfaction and experience.

Effective User Testing Doesn’t Have To Be Extensive

Jakob Nielsen’s study on the ideal number of test subjects in usability tests found that tests with just five users would reveal about 85% of all problems with your website, whereas 15 users would find pretty much all problems.

Source: Jakob Nielsen’s AlertBox

The biggest issues are usually discovered by the first one or two users, and the following testers confirm these issues and discover the remaining minor issues. Only two test users would likely find half the problems on your website. This means that testing doesn’t have to be extensive or expensive to yield good results. The biggest gains are achieved when going from 0 test users to 1, so don’t be afraid of doing too little: any testing is better than none.

Informative Product Pages Help You Stand Out

If your website has product pages, people shopping online will definitely look through them. But many product pages lack sufficient information, even for visitors doing a quick scan. This is a serious problem, because product information helps people make purchasing decision. Research shows that poor product information accounts for around 8% of usability problems and even 10% of user failure (i.e. the user gives up and leaves the website) (Prioritizing Web Usability).

Apple provides separate “Tech Specs” pages for its products, which keeps complicated details away from the simpler marketing pages, yet provides easy access when they’re needed.

Provide detailed information about your products, but don’t fall into the trap of bombarding users with too much text. Make the information easy to digest. Make the page scannable by breaking up the text into smaller segments and using plenty of sub-headings. Add plenty of images for your products, and use the right language: don’t use jargon that your visitors might not understand.

Most Users Are Blind To Advertising

Jakob Nielsen reports in his AlertBox entry that most users are essentially blind to ad banners. If they’re looking for a snippet of information on a page or are engrossed in content, they won’t be distracted by the ads on the side.

The implication of this is not only that users will avoid ads but that they’ll avoid anything that looks like an ad, even if it’s not an ad. Some heavily styled navigation items may look like banners, so be careful with these elements.

The square banners on the left sidebar of FlashDen are actually not ads: they’re content links. They do look uncomfortably close to ad banners and so may be overlooked by some users.

That said, ads that look like content will get people looking and clicking. This may generate more ad revenue but comes at the cost of your users’ trust, as they click on things they thought were genuine content. Before you go down that path, consider the trade-off: short-term revenue versus long-term trust.

Bonus: Findings From Our Case-Studies

In recent years, Smashing Magazine’s editorial team has conducted a number of case studies in an attempt to identify common design solutions and practices. So far, we have analyzed Web forms, blogs, typography and portfolios; and more case studies will be published next month. We have found some interesting patterns that could serve as guidelines for your next design.

Here, we’ll review some of the practices and design patterns that we discovered in our case studies in this brief, compact overview, for your convenience.

According to our typography study:

Line height (in pixels) ÷ body copy font size (in pixels) = 1.48
1.5 is commonly recommended in classic typographic books, so our study backs up this rule of thumb. Very few websites use anything less than this. And the number of websites that go over 1.48 decreases as you get further from this value.
Line length (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 27.8
The average line length is 538.64 pixels (excluding margins and padding), which is pretty large considering that many websites still have body copy that is 12 to 13 pixels in font size.
Space between paragraphs (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 0.754
It turns out that paragraph spacing (i.e. the space between the last line of one paragraph and the first line of the next) rarely equals the leading (which would be the main characteristic of perfect vertical rhythm). More often, paragraph spacing is just 75% of paragraph leading. The reason may be that leading usually includes the space taken up by descenders; and because most characters do not have descenders, additional white space is created under the line.
Optimal number of characters per line is 55 to 75
According to classic typographic books, the optimal number of characters per line is between 55 and 75, but between 75 and 85 characters per line is more popular in practice.

According to our blog design study:

Layouts usually have a fixed width (pixel-based) (92%) and are usually centered (94%). The width of fixed layouts varies between 951 and 1000 pixels (56%).
The home page shows excerpts of 10 to 20 posts (62%).
58% of a website’s overall layout is used to display the main content.

According to our Web form design study:

The registration link is titled “sign up” (40%) and is placed in the upper-right corner.
Sign-up forms have simple layouts, to avoid distracting users (61%).
Titles of input fields are bolded (62%), and fields are vertically arranged more than they are horizontally arranged (86%).
Designers tend to include few mandatory fields and few optional fields.
Email confirmation is not given (82%), but password confirmation is (72%).
The “Submit” button is either left-aligned (56%) or centered (26%).

According to our portfolio design study:

89% of layouts are horizontally centered, and most of them have a large horizontal navigation menu.
47.2% of portfolios have a client page, and 67.2% have some form of standalone services page.
63.6% have a detailed page for every project, including case studies, testimonials, slideshows with screenshots, drafts and sketches.
Contact pages contain driving directions, phone number, email address, postal address, vCard and online form.

Other Resources

15 Valuable Usability PDFs You’ve Never Heard Of
15 Important Research Findings You Should Know
10 Additional Research Findings You Should Know
Introduction To Good Usability
11 Striking Findings From an Eye-Tracking Study
25 Incredibly Useful Usability Cheat Sheets And Checklists
10 Usability Findings To Increase Sales And Customer Loyalty
Web form design guidelines: an eye-tracking study
Have any thoughts on what we’ve covered, or know of other useful usability findings? Please leave a comment below.

About the Author

Dmitry Fadeyev is the founder of the Usability Post blog, where you can read his thoughts on good design and usability. Follow Dmitry on Twitter @usabilitypost

Get Online in a Week* with a custom made website

2009-06-03T04:22:00.000-04:00

M&O can create a basic package so you can get your website up and running in a week for only $850.

Just follow these 3 easy steps:

Get your Domain + Host
Register your website's name and hosting with 1and1.com for only $3.99/month. Just click here to get started http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=7930592*.
Send us your content and pictures
Send us the wording and images for your site in a digital format.
Sign up with us

Our Basic Package includes:

5 pages (max 500 words long) including the Home Page. No sublinks. We suggest starting with: Home, About, Product/Services, Customer Service and Contact Us.
1 Flash animation of 3 frames for the Home Page
1 gallery of 10 pictures

Create your custom site with No templates
We do not work with templates, we create custom sites. The websites we design are:

Easy to maintain
Functional websites that work to bring customers to you
Have a look and feel that represents your company’s needs
Have logical flow and easy navigation.

M&O can create, redesign and update any kind of website. Click here for our web portfolio or call us for more details.

We hope to get you online in a week!

Sincerely,
Alejandra Marquez | alex@mnosolutions.com
____________________________________
3933 Biscayne Blvd. 2nd. Floor Miami, Florida 33137
OFF: 305.403.3566 | eFAX: 702.549.9349
www.mnosolutions.com

*M&O will create the website in a week from the moment M&O receives all the content, pictures, a signed proposal and the respective payment. All sites will have the "Created by M&O" signature in the bottom of every page. 1and1.com pricing is not included in the package. Logo design, forms, programming or data base management are not included in this package. Every website can grow as much as you want. This basic package is design so you can build your online catalogue and take the first step to get online. A soon as your phase 1 is completed; M&O can hep you get to the next step... subdivide your products/service page, add a shopping cart, create a data base, add more pages, and so on.

Looking for a new Host for your site?

2009-04-30T16:49:00.000-04:00

ab-WEB is your solution. I been working with ab_WEB for the last 4 years and they have the best customer service and support.

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Web Design Trends For 2009

2009-04-29T15:07:00.000-04:00

Reading www.smashingmagazine.com a very good online magazine that delivers useful and innovative information for designers and Web developers I found the following article... Good to know if you want to build a new site.

We Web designers are a fickle lot. We love to experiment with things. We love to observe how people interact with our work. And we love to try out unusual design approaches that might possibly go mainstream and become a classic approach. As a result, new design approaches come up, and as more and more designers notice them and make use of them, new trends emerge.

Over the last months, we’ve analyzed numerous Web designs, observing emerging trends and weighing the merits of numerous design decisions and coding solutions. In this post, we present Web design trends for 2009: recent developments, new design elements and new graphic approaches. We also discuss situations in which these trends can be used and present some beautiful examples. Did you miss any recent development in this overview? Let us know in the comments!

This article covers only 10 of the over 25 trends we’ve identified over the last months. The second part will be published next week. We’ll cover new layouts, new visual approaches and new design elements. Please stay tuned.
Embossing Letterpress
Rich user interfaces
PNG transparency
Big typography
Font replacement (sIFR, etc.)
Modal boxes
Media blocks
The magazine look
Carousels (slideshows)
Introduction blocks