livebooks blog

The Internet is full of GIFs, and for good reason – they are the perfect image format to portray a visual loop compressed in a very small size. They go well with the widespread mobile usage – their loading time is short and they use very little mobile data. They are easy to share and embed, whether in blog posts, chatting and, yes, as part of your portfolio website, too.

GIFs are not usually known for their high quality, but they can render 256 colors in 8-bit color images. That’s why, the sharper looking GIFs you might commonly find online portray mostly geometrical figures, logos or 3D renders. This is the general tone set by the majority of GIF posters, but that’s not all GIFs can be.

The greatest thing about your GIFs is that they can create a meaningful context or portray emotions. They create an unseen bond with the viewer and a sense of fulfilled expectation. They are super easy to add to your liveBooks website. These reasons alone should convince you to at least give GIFs a chance to be part of your portfolio.

Create GIFs from photos

Adobe Photoshop is the best tool to use when the source of your GIFs is your image gallery. Head over to the Adobe help page for a short and great tutorial on how to create animated GIFs from your images. The plus side of using your dedicated software when creating GIFs from images is quality control in a private medium.

Use snippets from your videos

Sharing videos is great, but creating GIF teasers from your videos to add them to your home page grid gallery is ten times as awesome. You can create GIFs from videos in Photoshop, and the link in our previous paragraph has a section dedicated to that.

You can also use online GIF creators such as Giphy – it creates GIFs from your YouTube or Vimeo videos, but you can also upload your video source from your computer. While the resulting GIFs come in good quality and don’t have a watermark, each time you create a GIF it is automatically uploaded to the Giphy library.

GIFs on your liveBooks site

You can add GIFs to your site just like you do with any other image – add them to your image collection or straight to the image block. They act like any other image, so you can adjust their widths, add overlays or hover effects, or even set them as backgrounds.

Our suggestion is to use them in grid type galleries, where their size is usually smaller. This way they will create the awesome dynamic effect without looking too grainy.

The pronunciation debate

You can say it like in gift, or like the peanut butter Jif – the debate is still on. But one thing’s for sure, regardless of how you want to pronounce it, you should give GIFs a try on your website.

Sign up for a free trial today and get in all the action the liveBooks website builder has to offer!

Your homepage, or start page, is the entryway to your entire website. It’s what your visitors see when they first access your website. It’s the best opportunity to catch their interest – it’s where their focus is at its finest. So why not use this to your advantage?

One of the many liveBooks features allows you to set any page on your website to be the homepage. Here are just a few ideas on how this great tool can work in your favor:

Set a Campaign page as homepage – online campaigns can help you gain more visibility. When running a campaign on your site, instead of editing your homepage, you can use another one specifically designed for your marketing purposes.

Set your Shop page as homepage – when you’re running sales, or have new merchandise you want to bring the attention to, this is the way to do it.

Set your Events page as homepage – any shows, fairs or other events you want to invite a large number of guests to are better shared the instant your visitors set their eyes on your website.

Set your Contact page as homepage – when you’re updating your contact information, email, phone number or physical address, you can opt to direct your clients directly to the Contact page for a set period of time.

To give any of your pages the homepage attribute, you need to follow these seven easy steps:

1. Log into your account.
2. Go to your Content editor.
3. Choose the page you want to use as homepage and click the Settings gear associated with the page.
4. Select Use as homepage.
5. When prompted on your decision, choose Yes. 
6. Your new homepage will have a small house icon next to the Settings gear. 
7. Publish your changes.

Unless you hide your original homepage, it will still appear on your website and function as any other page, leaving all your initial info intact. The only thing that will be different now is the first bit of information your visitors see when they enter your website.

As all businesses differ, so do the services and products they offer, and there are tons of ways to design your homepage with the liveBooks platform, whether it is a temporary one or the one you wish to settle on for a longer period of time.

To gain access to all the wonderful tools liveBooks has to offer, sign up for a free 14 days trial today!

What started in the late 1990s as a personal platform to share interests to the online public, blogs have steadily developed as trustworthy sources of information and pillars of communities whose followers may not be living in the same geographic region as the blogger, but their bond to the content creator and the rest of the members is as sturdy as they get.

Blogs come in many shapes: from the classic textual weblog, to vlogs (video blogs) or podcasts. But what emerged as an online-diary created and updated by only one individual is now becoming more obviously a very useful tool for businesses. Not only do they guarantee a constant flow of content, they are also the perfect answer to the newly-emerged question: WHO are these companies?

Trust is earned through hard work and commitment, and businesses rely on blogs more these days to assure the general public that their heart is in the right place. So they share their actions, their thoughts, their vision with everyone who would lend an ear. Whether in marketing campaigns or simple year-round content creation, businesses now turn to blogs to build better bridges.

The results? A reliable online community, an increase in brand visibility and more happy clients. If you’re not still convinced your creative business needs a blog, give this piece a thought.

Before starting a blog, you will need to take some things into consideration:

• You will need to be consistent, make a schedule and stick to it.
• You must find the topics that best suit you and your business and create your posts around them.
• You should know who your target is and adjust your writing persona to them.
• You should use an online platform that is easy to update.

We’ve already covered the top three items in a previous article, so make sure you give that a read to familiarize yourself to the process of starting a blog. So what we’re left is choosing the best platform for your followers and ultimately for yourself.

Use your website as the platform for your blog

There’s a chance you already have a website to showcase your products or services. It’s also very likely you’ve covered all the SEO bases and the website is generating valuable reach each day. So why use another platform for your blog when you can incorporate it to your website under a separate page? Think of all the perks this merger brings.

SEO
Take the SEO you already have set up for your website and add to the reach well-placed keywords within your blog posts can bring! Furthermore, think of your visitors: now they won’t have to change tabs to read your blog, instead they’ll spend more time on your website, where they can easily find your contact info and thus, making it easier for them to get in touch with you.

One platform
Adding a blog to your website means you don’t need to familiarize yourself with the functionalities of a stand-alone blog platform. This affects how you see your future blog posts: the easier it is to post them, the more likely you are to keep posting.
Choose a responsive platform that allows you to easily edit and upload your posts on the go. Once the restrains of your work-space are cut off, the limit to your possibilities goes with it.

One login
We have created tons of users and passwords for our online presence. Too many to keep track of. So why create another if you can bypass this altogether? Having your blog on the same platform as your website means you login once and all your tools are there for you to use.

Regular updates
We know updating your website is more than often postponed. If you had your website and blog on the same platform, though, every time you logged in to post something, you’ll inevitably be reminded that you need to address your website, too. Chances are you’ll find a couple of minutes to make those changes and provide your visitors with new content.

liveBooks is the website builder that allows blog incorporation on the same platform. Your posts, as well as your portfolio, are easy to update and share.

Try our responsive platform today and start your 14-day FREE trial!

The footer – the info that lies at the bottom of all website pages – always comes last, but that’s no reason to neglect it. Why? Well, for once, it’s the last thing your visitor or potential client sees after browsing any of your pages; and since you’ve made sure they’re welcome with a beautiful homepage, why not bid them farewell in the same way?

Most website owners tend to give the footer as little attention as possible, but for everyone else the footer is the gift shop at the end of the expo – an opportunity to browse and sink in what they’ve already seen, a chance to keep in touch with you.

The footer can serve as the home of many different tools, helpful not only for your clients, but for your business as well. We’ve put together a list of all the things you can use in your footer.

The guide

Take mobile browsers, for instance: on mobile, we tend to spend most of our time scrolling down until we reach the end of the page. Then what? Well, with a footer containing links to your most visited pages, the browsing could go on without having to scroll back to top and figuring out where to go next. Using the footer as a guide to your website will ensure your visitors spend more time on your website. This is especially useful when you have pages with lots of content.

The help

As much as the footer is beneficial to your visitors, it’s also a great help for you and your website when it comes down to SEO. The fact of the matter is that search engine crawlers that go through your website use the links provided by you in the footer to get a better read of what you consider to be important, ranking those pages higher. This doesn’t mean you should put links to all your pages in the footer, but make sure you don’t leave out the most important ones: your Contact and About pages, as well as your most visited page.

The proof

When dealing with clients it’s always a big plus of you can showcase your awards, certificates or badges to further grow your credibility. The footer is the best place for these seals of approval and can be the It-factor that helps your clients choose your service or products confidently.

The token

After your client has exhausted all your content, use the footer to lay down the bricks of future conversations: your social links or newsletter.

The brand

Of course your footer has to be in the same visual parameters as your brand, so go ahead and include your logo, your main copy, your campaign headline, or any other visual elements that are distinctive to your brand.

The fine print

Any site may come with its own technical and legal info. Use to footer to link to Privacy Policies, Terms & Conditions or Disclaimers.

General tips when building your footer:

• Space is important – footers sometimes tend to clutter, so do your best to avoid it. The more whitespace you have between your links, the easier they are to read and, most importantly, access. Never neglect the mobile users!
• Important links on top – you should try and keep your footer organized, starting with a hierarchy of the links you add.
• Make sure anyone can read it – this is especially important considering that most of the time, the font in the footer is smaller than that of the rest of the website. Make sure the font is still easy to read and that the contrast between the text and the background is easy on the eyes.

Sign up for a free trial today to see the many ways a footer can look and feel on all devices!