Websites…demystified

When I create websites for my clients, we work in a collaborative way so they’re learning about what websites are, how they work, and how to update them. These blog posts answer many of the questions my clients have as we work together. I hope you find this information helpful too.

Do you REALLY need a website?

Everyone tells you that you must have a website, but do you? Learn some of the ways you can promote your business without a website, either temporarily or permanently.

Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

Best practices for creating a Social Sharing image

You can add a Social Sharing image to Squarespace to be shown as a link preview for your website when you share a URL on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The size of 1200x628 pixels works best for those platforms. You can also set custom images for specific website pages or blog posts to draw extra attention to them.

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Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

Unsplash: Free images for commercial use

High-quality images are an important part of any online message you want to deliver. Free images that you can use on your website and with social media postings must either be your own originals, those that you have permission to use, or donated by artists to use free for commercial use. In addition to Pixabay, I've also discovered Unsplash as another place to find beautiful images that are free to use for commercial use.

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Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

How to pick the best banner image for your Home page

Choosing the main image on the home page of your website has repercussions for the colors, mood, and typeface choices for your whole website. Designers take a lot of things into consideration, including colors, size, and arrangement before choosing what's called a "hero image."

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Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

7 pro tips for a perfect banner photo showing people

Save yourself some time by keeping these tips in mind when you are selecting a large banner photo for the top of your website page. These guidelines apply both to selecting a photo from a stock photo site or if you plan on using photographs of yourself in banner photos as many service-oriented business owners do.

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Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

How to make your own crop circles in Squarespace

A circle adds a different design shape to your website, which can be a refreshing change from the usual square and rectangle images. Squarespace makes it easy to crop your square image into a circle (and a lot of other shapes). No coding needed.

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Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

The one time you must use a transparent .png image

As a rule, you should use images that use the .jpg format on your website. However, if you need the special effect of a background color or image showing through an image placed on top, you’ll need to use a transparent image saved in .png format.

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Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

How to place an image perfectly on a Squarespace website

Placing images exactly where you want them on website pages and blog posts can be tricky and frustrating. In this blog post, you'll learn how to place images exactly where you want them in Squarespace. Image placement applies when your website is seen on a computer. On a cell phone, photos are stacked above or below your text.

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Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

The one trick to starting a Squarespace website

When you get started with Squarespace, you are faced with a design decision before you even provide a domain name or a credit card number. As I browsed through many templates in doing work for clients, I started to realize that there was one design decision about the banner image that narrows down template choices right away.

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Design Kerry A. Thompson Design Kerry A. Thompson

Choosing a design based on where the navigation text falls

Whenever I start working with a client, I ask the client to make one or two decisions to narrow down the design choices. The first decision I ask clients to make is to choose a large image that goes the full width of the page or choose a narrower image with some "breathing room" on either side. If they prefer a wide edge-to-edge image, there's a second decision. Do they want the navigation text to appear above the image or within the image? Making that second decision narrows down design template choices to just a few.

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Stop struggling. Start your website.