this week in web design • 1stWebDesigner https://1stwebdesigner.com/ Helping You Build a Better Web Tue, 18 Oct 2022 19:18:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://1stwebdesigner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1stwebdesigner-logo-2020-125x125.png this week in web design • 1stWebDesigner https://1stwebdesigner.com/ 32 32 9 Ways to Prep Your Online Store for Black Friday Now https://1stwebdesigner.com/9-ways-to-prep-your-online-store-for-black-friday-now/ Tue, 08 Nov 2022 09:51:19 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=158499 Black Friday is coming up, and that means a lot of people are going to be looking to buy things online. If you’re an online store owner, now is absolutely the time to start preparing for the rush. You definitely don’t want to wait until the week of Thanksgiving to make sure everything is in order. Talk about unnecessary stress!

Thankfully, there are a few things you can do now to make sure your store is ready for the influx of traffic prior to the big weekend. And we’ve compiled 9 tips to set you on the right path toward the holiday season.

Let’s take a look!

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1. Create a Plan of Attack

First things first, you need to have a plan for how you’re going to approach Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This means having an idea of what sort of deals you want to offer, what kind of products you want to promote, and how you’re going to market everything to your customers.

This is the time to really sit down and think about your goals for the holiday season and what you need to do to achieve them.

2. Get Your Website Ready

Next, you need to make sure your website is actually ready to handle the influx of traffic it’s going to receive. This means doing things like the following:

  • Testing your site’s speed: If your site is slow, customers are going to get frustrated and leave without making a purchase. Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to see how your site is currently performing and get some tips on how to improve things.
  • Making sure your site is mobile-friendly: A large portion of online shopping is done on mobile devices these days, so you need to make sure your site looks good and functions well on smaller screens.
  • Making sure your payment gateway can handle the volume: You don’t want to run into any issues with your payment gateway on one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year. Perform any required updates and perhaps even reach out to your provider to ensure reliability.
  • Ensuring that your server can handle the load: Again, you don’t want your site to go down in the middle of all the Black Friday madness. Talk to your web hosting provider and see what they recommend in terms of preparing your server for the increased traffic.

Pagespeed Insights - Black Friday

If you’re not sure how to do this, we recommend working with a developer or someone who knows their way around these sorts of things. The last thing you want is for your site to crash in the middle of Black Friday!

3. Prepare Your Product Inventory

Of course, you’re also going to want to make sure you have enough inventory on hand to meet the demand of your customers. This is especially important if you sell physical products that need to be shipped out.

Now is the time to check in with your suppliers, make sure you have enough products in stock, and create a plan for how you’re going to keep everything organized during the holiday rush.

4. Create Black Friday-Specific Landing Pages

If you really want to take your Black Friday game up a notch, we recommend creating some specific landing pages for your deals and promotions. This is a great way to showcase everything you’re offering and make it easy for your customers to find what they’re looking for.

If you use WordPress, you can easily integrate these landing pages into your standard marketing efforts. For example, you can use a landing page plugin like Beaver Builder to create custom pages with ease.

Beaver Builder - Black Friday

A good Black Friday landing page should include:

  • A clear and concise headline
  • A description of the deals and promotions you’re offering
  • Images or videos to help highlight everything
  • CTAs for customers to take advantage of your deals
  • A countdown timer to create a sense of urgency

5. Advertise, Advertise, Advertise!

You also need to make sure your potential customers are actually aware of the deals and promotions you’ll be running for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The best way to do this is to start advertising early and often. This includes posting reminders and updates about your Black Friday deals, coupons, and special discounts across your social media accounts.

6. Get Your Email List in Order

Email is still one of the best ways to reach your customers, so if you haven’t already, now is the time to start building up your list. This way, you can send out special Black Friday deals and promotions directly to their inboxes. If your email marketing system isn’t yet integrated with your eCommerce platform, now’s the time to set that up.

Again, if you use WordPress, there are plenty of email marketing plugins that can help you get started, like MailChimp for WordPress.

Mailchimp For WordPress

And make sure you’re also segmenting your list so you’re only sending relevant information to people who actually want to receive it. No one likes getting bombarded with emails they don’t care about!

7. Offer Incentives for Customers Who Shop Early

If you really want to get people excited about your Black Friday deals, offer special incentives for those who shop early. This could be in the form of a discount code for those who make a purchase on your site before a certain date. Or you could offer early access to your Black Friday deals for VIP customers or email subscribers.

8. Make Checkout as Easy as Possible

Another way to ensure a smooth Black Friday for both you and your customers is to make the checkout process as easy as possible. This means having a user-friendly checkout flow on your site and offering a variety of payment options.

Some things you can do to streamline the checkout process include:

  • Offering a guest checkout option.
  • Making sure your forms are short and easy to understand.
  • Including a progress bar so customers can see how far along they are in the checkout process.
  • Allowing customers to save their information for future purchases.

9. Provide Excellent Customer Service

Finally, one of the most important things you can do to prepare for Black Friday is to make sure your customer service game is on point. This means having a team in place to answer any questions or concerns your customers might have.

You should also have a plan for how you’re going to handle any increased customer service volume. This might include additional staff, extended hours, or live chat support. Whatever you do, just make sure your customers feel taken care of and that their concerns are being addressed in a timely manner.

Plan for Black Friday Success with Online Store Prep

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are some of the busiest shopping days of the year. But with a little bit of planning and preparation, you can make sure your online store is ready to take advantage of all the holiday shoppers. Just follow the tips in this post and you’ll be well on your way to a successful Black Friday!

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The Best Free Tailwind CSS Components For 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/the-best-free-tailwind-css-components-for-2022/ Tue, 26 Apr 2022 10:00:57 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=158255 If you’re a web developer/designer and haven’t already heard about or tried Tailwind CSS, it’s likely you have been living under a rock! First released as an alpha in 2017 and now in version 3, the utility-first CSS framework …

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If you’re a web developer/designer and haven’t already heard about or tried Tailwind CSS, it’s likely you have been living under a rock! First released as an alpha in 2017 and now in version 3, the utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom designs is all the rage these days. It seems we don’t see a day go by without at least one new article published about this unique offering in the world of web design (see some examples in our weekly roundups of articles).

One of the best parts of the Talwind CSS ecosystem is the components that can greatly speed up your development process by dropping them into your project and modifying as needed. You can find and use headings, navigation, data display, lists, forms, buttons, and even full page layouts, plus much more – all great starting points for various needs you will have in your projects.

In this post, we’re going to show you all of the free Tailwind CSS component resources we could find, to save you time next time you’re looking to include components in your projects.

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Tailwindcomponents.com

Tailwindcomponents.com - Free Tailwind CSS components

A repository for community components and templates, easily searchable, beautifully designed and organized, and completely free!

gust ui

gust ui - Free Tailwind CSS Components

Responsive HTML & React components for your next web application. Make your Tailwind CSS apps even sleeker and faster to develop with our ever growing library of components, elements, and example pages.

Float UI

Float UI - Free Tailwind CSS Components

Interactive and different components with React and beautiful design using Tailwind CSS + pure CSS. Every component is fully responsive and carefully implemented to look great at any screen size. Beautifully designed, expertly crafted components that allow you to build a great UI/UX and are easy to customize.

Tail-kit

Tail-kit - Free Tailwind CSS Components

Tail-kit gives you access to over 250 free components and free templates, based on Tailwind CSS 2.0, all compatible with React, VueJS and Angular applications.

Tailwind Awesome

Tailwind Awesome

Tailwind Awesome is a curated list of the best Tailwind templates & UI kits in the internet. They say they are actively searching, and curating the coolest resources out there. They have all kinds of resources, along with a large section of free components.

Kometa UI Kit

Kometa UI Kit - Free Tailwind CSS Components

The folks at kitwind released this free UI kit with over 130 sections, all fully responsive and available in HTML, VueJS, and React.

Tailblocks

Tailblocks - Free Tailwind CSS Components

A collection of blocks built in Tailwind CSS, with HTML you can easily copy and paste into your own project.

Tailwind Toolbox

Tailwind Toolbox

Open source starter templates and components, a directory of handy building kits, generators, plugins and useful tools to kick start your Tailwind CSS project.

Mamba UI

Mamba UI - Free Tailwind CSS Components

Mamba UI is a free, open-source collection of 100+ UI components and templates based on Tailwind CSS. Everything is modular and customizable to fit your brand. From blogs to portfolios to online stores, you can quickly create a variety of layouts that look great on any screen.

HyperUI

HyperUI - Free Tailwind CSS Components

HyperUI is a collection of free Tailwind CSS components that can be used in your next project. With a range of components, you can build your next marketing website, admin dashboard, ecommerce store and much more.

Headless UI

Headless UI - Free Tailwind CSS Components

Completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components, designed to integrate beautifully with Tailwind CSS.

daisyUI

daisyUI - Free Tailwind CSS Components

daisyUI adds classes to Tailwind CSS for all common UI components, with low CSS specificity so you can customize everything using Tailwind CSS utility classes. Highly customizable.

Flowbite

Flowbite - Free Tailwind CSS Components

Flowbite is an open-source library of UI components based on the utility-first Tailwind CSS framework featuring dark mode support, a Figma design system, and more. It includes all of the commonly used components that a website requires, such as buttons, dropdowns, navigation bars, modals, but also some more advanced interactive elements such as datepickers.

Tailwind Starter Kit

Tailwind Starter Kit - Free Tailwind CSS Components

Tailwind Starter Kit is a free and open source extension. It does not change or add any CSS to the already one from Tailwind CSS. It features multiple HTML elements and it comes with dynamic components for ReactJS, Vue and Angular.

PostSrc

PostSrc - The Best Free Tailwind CSS Components For 2022

From alerts to avatars, badges to breadcrumbs, social share box to tabs, PostSrc has a nice collection of components ready to use for free.

Tailwind Elements

 

Tailwind Elements - The Best Free Tailwind CSS Components For 2022

Tailwind Elements are Bootstrap components recreated with Tailwind CSS, but with better design and more functionalities. Over 500+ UI components.

lofi ui

lofi ui - The Best Free Tailwind CSS Components For 2022

Lofi ui is a library of low fidelity web app components. The components are built to be as efficient as possible in their HTML structure and rely on only just enough CSS, via Tailwind CSS, to render them functional. Think of these components as head-start on building and styling a component exactly as you need.

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This Week In Web Design – April 1, 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/this-week-in-web-design-april-1-2022/ Fri, 01 Apr 2022 16:34:36 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=158181 This Week In Web Design – March 18, 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/this-week-in-web-design-march-18-2022/ Fri, 18 Mar 2022 17:11:55 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=158140 This Week In Web Design – March 11, 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/this-week-in-web-design-march-11-2022/ Fri, 11 Mar 2022 16:36:18 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=158092 This Week In Web Design – March 4, 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/this-week-in-web-design-march-4-2022/ Fri, 04 Mar 2022 16:23:59 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=158057 This Week In Web Design – February 25, 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/this-week-in-web-design-february-25-2022/ Fri, 25 Feb 2022 17:04:06 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=158026 This Week In Web Design – February 18, 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/this-week-in-web-design-february-18-2022/ Fri, 18 Feb 2022 16:21:35 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=158000 This Week In Web Design – February 11, 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/this-week-in-web-design-february-11-2022/ Fri, 11 Feb 2022 17:14:27 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=157967 This Week In Web Design – February 4, 2022 https://1stwebdesigner.com/this-week-in-web-design-february-4-2022/ Fri, 04 Feb 2022 16:36:33 +0000 https://1stwebdesigner.com/?p=157939