Email marketing is one of the most popular online marketing activities these days. By creating an attractive, reader-friendly email message, readers can become even more engaged and interested to discover new information or learn more about promotional campaigns, while increasing your website traffic, and ultimately your sales.

There are some key factors to keep in mind when you are challenged to deliver attractive designs for your email marketing templates:

• Simplicity & cleanliness. As we discussed in Common Web Designs Mistakes to Avoid, simple and clean design is most effective for all web-related tools. Sophisticated email templates tend to distract readers from reading your message. Avoid overcrowding your email with complex design, big pictures and information overload.
• Web browser compatibility. A little research on the latest web standards will serve you well and help enable you to create newsletter templates that will be properly displayed in most browsers.
• Choose the Right Color. Colors affect a reader’s mood. As a basic rule, one should choose colors that are in line with its brand or, at a minimum, complementary colors.
• Brief introductions. If your email contains a variety of information, try to be brief, and give your readers introductory phrases with links to the full content on your website.
• Eliminate headers at the top of the email. Headers and big images take up too much time and space to load in a preview pane, and don’t give your readers enough reason to open your email. Focus on making sure you are placing the most important information at the top. Remember, many email clients choose to block images, so you don’t want your readers to be greeted with a big “X”.
• Use small images. As large images serve to slow down email loading time, you readers will quickly move on.
• Preview pane available calls-to-action. Email templates should be designed so that the most important information appears in the preview pane. We recommend placing the call to action at the top of the template, providing readers the option to visit your website without taking the time to open the email.
• Adapt the template for mobile devices. Now that mobile devices are becoming increasingly more popular, designers are faced with new challenges. Design your email to scale down cleanly so that it is readable regardless of the platform your recipients are using.

At CodeMyIMAGE we know emails aren’t just advertising, they incorporate relevant information for your readers. Designing customized emails or newsletter templates requires not only creativity but technical knowledge. Our development team will assist you in creating effective email templates that maximize the delivery on any device or client email.

In our last article we provided some reasons you should choose HTML5 instead of  HTML for converting designs. Today we bring you the latest industry’s news on HTML5 features:

• The Mobile Benefits Promised in HTML5
• HTML5 Elements For SEO Benefit
• HTML5 to Create New Wave of Opportunities in Mobile Landscape
• HTML5 vs Native: The Mobile App Debate

For any website development project, converting the design to HTML is a necessity. HTML is considerably the most well known and most preferred markup language in use today. One of its greatest values is its ability to help describe and structure the content and appearance of website pages on the Internet. That is one of the key reasons it can be found in use by web developers worldwide. And with the introduction of HTML5, and its expanded capabilities, it’s no surprise to see web developers flocking to embrace the technology so they can experience its benefits.

HTML5 is an improved version of HTML with a number of new features that provide the ability to enhance the functionality of a website to an even greater extent. HTML5 answers some fundamental needs of the modern Internet and addresses some of the shortcomings inherent in the earlier versions of HTML. One of the most important enhancements of HTML5 is that it is easily accessible by the newer versions of web browsers like Firefox, Chrome or Opera.

Some of the basic differences between HTML and HTLM5 are:

• Better usability. HTML5 focuses on improving the accessibility of the Internet to provide better usability to users and makes the Internet more understandable for search engine robots.
• Easier to access by all the web browsers.
• Search engine friendly. This feature helps any website gain better ranking in search engines and can provide a greater volume of traffic. The more accurate the code behind a website is, the higher that website is ranked by search engines, resulting in increased audience visibility.
• Backwards compatibility. Websites written in previous versions of HTML don’t need to be updated to be correctly displayed by the most modern browsers.

In addition, HTML5 has some exciting features that are useful for the mobile web. Being supported by Apple and Google, it introduces several technology improvements like: adding off-line data storage, video and audio streaming and playback, geo-location, extended drag and support system, and user interface tools.

HTML5 is the best technology to implement into your website to proactively keep up with Internet dynamics. We also believe that mobile websites need to keep pace and be innovative and easy to use. We are experienced with coding PSD to HTML5 websites and we can help your business achieve an effective presence both in the traditional and mobile web zones.

At CodeMyIMAGE we are aware that HTML5 offers one of the best opportunities for creating more interactive and efficient websites, and we encourage the implementation of this newer technology.

In our last article we provided some ways for reducing costs and improving efficiency in web development. Today, we would like to bring you more resources from web developers industry specialists:

• Build a Website for Your Small Business: 5 DIY Services
• 14 Prototyping and Wireframing Tools for Designers
• 20 Popular text editors and IDE solutions for web developers
• WYSIWYG vs. Hand Coding, the Great Debate

Whether you are working for a startup or a well-established company, certainly you will be looking for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency. And if the business has any online component at all, then building an efficient and cost effective website is crucial.

Here are a few tips for those who are looking for ways to build websites effectively and efficiently:

• Planning and project management products. Like any other project, a web development project needs to have a plan because one has to take into consideration multiple aspects like website design and graphics, content, server hosting and coding. In order to create a new website in the most efficient way consider the use of planning and time-tracking free products like PlanningForce, Glasscubes, Huddle, or Evernote.
• Wireframing solutions can be a real time saving element of your web design process. By wireframing, you get a quick prototype of your website’s structure and architecture and help avoid running into possible issues. SlickPlan, Gliffy, Jumpchart, Mockflow, iPlotz and Mockingbird are just some of the free solutions one could use for creating a website wireframe.
• Code editors. Many applications exist for coding a website in simple and easy steps. Araneae is an editor that includes syntax highlighting, drag and drop support, and tabbed editing. Araneae includes several extensions like HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby files. EditPad Lite is a text editor written in 10 different languages. It is free for non-commercial use only.
• Freelancers. When you need specific web development knowledge, maybe you could get a little help by outsourcing some project tasks to freelancers. Outsourcing is commonplace in the web industry and you can find some good freelancers at Freelancer.com or ifreelance.com.

Last but not least, choose expert services. For complex websites, with clear and detailed objectives, it would be good to choose a professional PSD to HTML service. Hand coding is a much more effective and efficient service compared to the automated software available. Hand coding provides the ultimate flexibility to develop web pages for the most detailed and creative designs. Although it is not a free solution, it will ensure fast, efficient and cost effective development of any website. At CodeMyIMAGE we can deliver professional coding for your most creative website projects.