Must Design

• Cleartrip.com (Travel)
  
• Paytm.com (Walmart like e-retailer)
  
• Myntra.com (Abercrombie-like online store)
  
• Zomato.com (Foodie)
  
• Flipkart.com (Walmart like e-retailer)
  
• iXiGO.com (Travel)

Indian web design is marked by innovation, clear Calls-To-Action and graceful use of current and future technology. "In India my generation," my friend Ravi told me the other day, "went right to mobile skipping laptops and desktops altogether".

I was looking at these sites with my laptop and expect they look great on smart phones too. Nothing like having must of your customers using mobile tech to make mobile first in both responsive templates and impressive data architecture (easy to see how these sites would accordion in mobile.

The foodie site Zomato.com lives up to its great name. The content, despite their not being "here" yet, is fresh, beautiful to look at and engaging. Zomato is about FOOD and, much like India herself, has few preconceived notions about what that means. .

Instead they curate with clear passion and grace. Every Indian site we studied had a clear sense of GET TO IT many American sites could learn from. Indian web designers know how to "tease", charm and win clicks by providing just the right information at the right time.

Many American designers seek to overwhelm and thus end up speaking to themselves about themselves. Better to box not look for the haymakers we seem to love so much here these great Indian web designed sites illustrate.

Web designers shouldn't be SEO experts since keeping up with DESIGN is a full-time job. Nothing has made that truth more apparent than my first week learning CSS, SCSS and the like at The Iron Yard Code Academy in Durham, NC this week.

But web designers are where SEO rubber meets the Google Road so understanding a handful of ideas is critical to the online success of any designers creations. This deck was created to share with The Iron Yard's Cohort 3 Front End Engineering class Friday January 16th.

Includes our favorite FREE SEO tools and how we use them. Good luck and let us know your SEO / Design experience and we will curate into an upcoming post on http://www.curagami.com.

Now it’s time to analyze the web designs that have emerged this year, and place predictions for the possible trends that lie ahead for 2015.

Marty Note
Promise to create a mashup of all web design trends postings to identify common consensus and outliers.

Bauhaus is not only one of the most important design movements in history, but an especially relevant style for Web Designers. Alex and Simone tell you why.

Marty Note
Wow, love this post by SitePoint.com's Web Developer Alex Walker and graphic designer Simone Sala because it both EXPLAINS Bauhaus Design Principles and then applies them with examples to the web. #toogood

The Bauhaus stressed form and function. Removing ornamentation in favor of clarity, ease of use and beauty. Sounds like MOBILE DESIGN to me.

Mobile is so SMALL it forces the right choices. Look how "mobile design" is not impacting web design. Mobile stared trends such as limited color palettes and flat graphics because of limitations (of smart phones), but those limitations can also help FREE up a website and point it more clearly at true north.

True north online is where visitors know what to do and why easily and are so engaged by your content they want to do (what you want them to do) AND they want to share the experience with friends. Mobile's "game console-like" BEING is reshaping marketing (see Marketing's Big Bang Manifesto https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/Tf9GNsX35qn ).

Great, helpful post.

*Web Design For DIY*
The Do-It-Yourself revolution is blowing up thanks to mobile apps and social media. This link includes one of our favorite examples: http://www.Casetify.com where we just created our http://www.Curagami.com logo case for iPhone 6Plus.

We are working on a series of posts about how to engage and empower your DIY customers & you can help. Send ideas, comments and your experiences with DIY marketing and we will curate into the piece with attribution and a link (martin (at) curagami.com).

Find more DIY Marketing thoughts and a secret code you can use to get $10 off your Casetify.com creations (8PGZX3). Sharing a code like that is powerful brand ambassador fuel.

Share your DIY tips and check out more notes on GPlus:
https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/Nezb4QZgayx

Best Mobile App Design
Mobile apps are great web design teachers. Flat, clean and simple are mobile design trends any web design can benefit from. This excellent Quora thread shares powerful mobile app design best in class. Our favorite Pattern.dk.  

Responsive Web Designs
Responsive design, forming a website's information so it looks great on any device, is becoming mission critical. Here are 65 of the best responsive designs in 2014 via SocialDriver.com.

You'll never feel left out at a hipster web design party with these 15 key terms under your belt

Mobify is a mobile e-commerce optimization platform used by leading online retailers to deliver exceptional responsive shopping experiences.

2014 Web Design Trends - Marty Note
Not a secret we are seeing flatter more responsive design in 2014, but I liked the format of the way Script Tutorials explained each trend with examples and wireframes.

2 of these ideas, Video Backgrounds and Interactive Infographics could be huge. Video backgrounds was a new idea to me even halfway through the year.

Voice Search = Next Big Thing
As of 2014 we know 55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search on a daily basis. Now with virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa and voice recognition. 

Marty Note:
The way you get your content into their voice box is all about how you structure DATA. This post gives a great overview of schema and how to use it to win hearts, minds and loyalty as Siri shows your stuff instead of theirs.  

Might want to sprinkle a little predictive analytics and  AI-like branching too. Read this post and understand the new SEO. 

Parallax scrolling is a popular design technique used on websites in order to create an illusion of movement on the screen, to help engage website visitors and move visitor yes where you want them AND parallax scrolling plays beautifully on mobile devices!.

Here are 60 examples of great parallax scrolling.

Mobile responsive design tools for testing your website or apps before it goes live. You'll find both FREE and paid solutions.

Web Design
Cha Cha Changes are ahead for web design. Our social / mobile / connected world is blowing up our wireframes. and that's a good thing.

The "Web Design" category of general interest covers its fair share of ground. Informative articles on everything from UX to client management, to conversion psychology,...

Designing Tomorrow's Ecommerce
I'm writing a blog post for Curatti that will go live at midnight tonight that discusses the "best practices" of "Tomorrow's Ecommerce". I'm also writing a Curagami blog post (also published at midnight) about how social shopping will change Tomorrow's Ecommerce.

Tomorrow's Ecom Current Best Practices (Curatti tonight)
Tomorrow's Ecom Social & Mobile Web (on Curagami now)

The Haiku Deck that bridges both of these posts is linked above and here:
http://shar.es/1nkJef

As we publish each post we will link them here.

Like the World Wide Web itself, the world of website design is constantly in flux as technologies change and design standards evolve. What worked in 2013 may

Beautiful Unusual Navigation Designs for Inspiration. Selection of Awwwards websites with a strong presence of unusual navigation. An effective navigation design is crucial for a website

Fantastic CSS3 Website Designs for Inspiration. Selection of Awwwards winning CSS3 websites. CSS3 is a powerful tool for web designers to enhance the appearance of a website.