As a long time Denver Website Designer, I used to do a lot of animation in the old-days using Macromedia Flash (later purchased by Adobe). Flash made it easy to animate small objects such as this bumblebee illustration. Now that Flash is extinct, however, I still do add subtle animations to websites I design. These bumblebee illustrations were animated using Adobe Photoshop and their Animation Timeline to create some small movement and exported as a looping animated gif. This is a fun way to add a little bit of movement to a website. I can't say that Photoshop is as great as Flash was for creating animations, but it can do the trick! The Wix platform also has animation options for scrolling, rollovers and elements, though I most of the Wix animation options very sparingly as they can slow down load time for users. These bumbling bumblebees are used on a couple client websites related to gardening, find them in the footers of these websites below. Also be on the lookout for an animated hummingbird on the Colorado Gardener site, using the same simple animation: peopleandpollinators.org People and Pollinators Action Network is helping make Colorado and the world a safer place for our pollinators. Check out all that they're doing on the website, including their Recent Successes page which give us hope that things are changing for the better! coloradogardener.com Colorado Gardener magazine is my favorite publication! It's available free and they have two issues this coming season in the spring and summer. The magazine is packed with great articles that are all about gardening in Colorado. I'm always amazed as I look over the table of contents, I am interested in reading every single article! And, be sure to check out their Colorado Gardening Events calendar which has all sorts of wonderful classes, plant sales, plant swaps, and other events to check out.

As a Wix Website Designer, I discover solutions for Wix website issues all the time. Here's another one: I recently discovered that a Mac OS Preference Setting under Accessibility for "Reduce Motion" was disabling Wix strip video backgrounds from playing. I recently ran into an issue where my Wix Video strip backgrounds were not playing on my iMac, but seemed to work for everyone else. I am using an iMac running OS Big Sur 11.5.2 using the latest Chrome browser Version 96.0.4664.110 as well as Safari Version 14.1.2 and Firefox 95.0.2 (64-bit) – and the strip Video on my client's Wix website was not playing. The issue seemed to be isolated to my computer, as others were able to test and see the video – I wasn't sure what was causing it. I'm on a high speed fiber direct ethernet connection with super fast download speeds, so it should load instantly. And, it did play in the Wix editor. Strange. Well, the solution was this: I discovered that my Mac OS Preference Setting under Accessibility for "Reduce Motion" was disabling Wix strip video backgrounds from playing. I had turned on "Reduce Motion" a few months back to see if it helped cure my dizziness caused by too mush scrolling and screen movement when on the computer designing or surfing the internet. This Accessibility "Reduce Motion" Mac preference setting did not seem to reduce any motion from ads or videos playing and splattering the screen on news or recipe websites, but it DID stop Wix strip or page background videos from playing! Easy fix, and probably isolated to just me and maybe just a few otherr people who decided to try out that "Reduce Motion" setting! Last note: I still wish that News, Recipe, and Blog websites would stop plastering their pages with slow loading and continuously loading ads that attack your eyes with movement and bumping the content around on the page. They're really unbearable for me and I usually quickly leave a site that has ads continually loading and moving the content around, it's obnoxious and it hurts my eyes! I don't see how pushing people away from their websites is helping with the bottom line. I will stay much longer on a website that is clean and doesn't have too many ads or movement on the page.

Posting this one again... :) Why the New Year is Great: "But honey, I haven't planted any seeds since last year!" Cheers to a new year full of growing, abundance, sharing and giving.

2021 Update: In 2021 I noticed that the Page Transitions had disappeared from the Wix Editor Site Pages Menu, so here is where you can find them - under the Site Design tab in the left-hand toolbar (the Site Design tool icon is an A with a droplet). See it here below: Here is where you can find the Wix Page Transitions in 2021/2022: Here is where they USED to be before 2021: If you don't like how your Wix website's effect (swipe, fade) when it changes pages, you can easily change the Page Transitions in your page editor. You can choose None if you don’t want any transition. It’s also good to color your background to the color desired in case the page takes a second to load. When a page loads, it loads the background color first, and there may be a second where the rest of the page content loads. Unfortunately, we can’t control that loading time. You can simplify your page content so it loads quicker, but you may still experience the momentary background color as the page loads. This is common across lots of website platforms. I like no transition best (NONE) due to load times, no page transition animations is quickest for the user, so I suggest to choose None. In addition to slowing down the page load speed, to be honest, the page "Horizontal" or "Vertical" slides make my eyes hurt. But that may be because I'm a full-time Wix Website Designer, and I'm on the computer too much! ;)

As a Wix Website Designer, I have to find solutions to Wix Editor questions all the time, and I like to share them here. In 2021 I noticed that the Page Transitions had disappeared from the Wix Editor Site Pages Menu, so here is where you can find them - under the Site Design tab in the left-hand toolbar (the Site Design tool icon is an A with a droplet). See it here below: Keep in mind, I find that Wix page transitions slow down the page load time, so I avoid using any page transition animations on my client Wix websites to keep the pages loading as fast as possible for the best user experience. Happy Wixing! Looking for help with your Wix Website Design? Reach out for a free Wix Website Design estimate »

So, I have been brewing up this sustainable business idea... it would be cool if a non-profit or company offered a super-sustainable Bike "Composting" service – where there would be a crew of bicycling composters who come to people's homes weekly to collect and put their filled compost bucket or bags of leaves into a backyard compost setup and rotate it and tend to it as necessary. Then, the residents could see how easy it is to compost. The idea is to get them setup with a compost bin, so they learn how it works, they can use the finished compost in their own yard, and, if desired, they can take over or we can keep composting for them. We could start a backyard revolution! The best part – no trucks and no fuel or energy is wasted moving compost – it's all done on-site! I think most people just think that having a compost bin is difficult. If a household has someone else to compost for them, they will see how easy it is with their own eyes in their backyards, plus they get to reap the benefits of fresh top-quality compost in their gardens... then they may just start doing it themselves. If not, the service can continue, but it would be great if many residents saw how easy it was, and could continue to compost themselves. Part of the service or options could include: setup of a compost bin in their backyard, and providing a bucket with lid to use indoors or out to compost kitchen scraps. The BEST part of this idea, is that, unlike other compost "pickup" services, the compost doesn't have to go anywhere. It can be 100% reused on site, no picking up and transporting compost in trucks or composting facilities needed. Just a backyard bin! .... I was thinking of calling it "The Compost Cycle” or “Compost Cyclers” or something like that… What do you think? I think this would be cool if lots of people did this across the country! I wonder if we could get grants from government infrastructure or sustainability funds to get this project kick-started? This could help fund the cost/setup a website to get members, purchase compost bins, bikes that can hold shovels/buckets, and funds to find people to do the work at a decent hourly wage. Maybe we could partner with the city programs to offer this as a service in addition to their compost pickup services. I’d love your thoughts on how to make it happen! And, I may mention, I have a successful website design home business, so I don't have to be the one who runs with this idea. I would love to see something like this happen in cities across the world. So, someone can just take this idea and run with it, too, I just wanted to plant the seed!

I'm excited to announce the launch of a new website for pollinators: www.peopleandpollinators.org - built on Wix! This is one of our all time best Wix websites we've had the fortune to work on! We moved them from their old cumbersome WP site to Wix so it's easier for their staff to keep the website updated and every page is gorgeous with photos of flowers and pollinators. We had a lot of fun designing this website, which is packed with beautiful photos and some fun illustrations including an animated honeybee. :) As an avid organic gardener, I love planting native plants and hosting pollinators of all kinds in my garden and the community garden I lead. So this cause is very near to my heart. In addition to supporting local groups like People and Pollinators and Wild Ones, I highly recommend everyone read the wonderful book, Nature's Best Hope to be inspired to plant native plants and create biodiversity in your own backyard. Go pollinators! View more of our Best Wix Websites »

As a SEO Hero, I love the Keywords Everywhere tool! Especially because it shows the related keywords on the right of searches right in your Google search. No need to login and jump through the hoops to get to the Google Adwords’ Keyword planner. It’s perfect for my website design projects so I can quickly find good keyword terms to use on client websites as I do their SEO optimization. Two thumbs way up! Here's a screenshot below that shows the "Related Keywords" and "People Also Searched for" stats from the Keywords Everywhere Chrome extension. These show up right next to the actual search results so you can see which other sites are ranking while getting ideas of what people are actually searching for. In this example, as I am an Infographic Designer, I show up #1 under the paid results. Next to it, it shows related keywords such as "infographic examples" that I could use as ideas for a blog post or page. Become your own SEO Hero, and check out the Keywords Anywhere Chrome Extension at: keywordseverywhere.com Check out the Keywords Anywhere extension below or click: keywordseverywhere.com

What minimum Wix plan is needed to run an Ecwid store? Is a Wix Business plan needed if I'm using Ecwid on Wix for ecommerce/payments? Ecwid is a great Shopping Platform that integrates nicely with Wix. Ecwid has a lot more customizable features, so it's much more robust than Wix Stores (for now, Wix is always improving their ecommerce platform!) Sometimes I put my clients on Wix Stores if they have basic ecommerce needs, or I use Ecwid for more customized needs (custom options/checkout needs/more custom shipping/pickup options, etc.) Wix Ecommerce Pricing As a Wix Website Designer, one question I get from my clients often is what is their monthly overhead costs if they were to have an ecommerce Wix website. One thing that is good to know is that IF you use Ecwid instead of Wix Stores for your online store/payments, you don't need a Wix Business hosting plan (which also accept payments), and you can instead use a regular Wix Combo or Unlimited hosting plan. which are considerably less than Wix's Business hosting plans. This is good to know to keep costs as low as possible for what is needed. Of course, Ecwid also charges their own monthly fee on top of your Wix plan costs, see examples below. Note that there are no transaction fees for Ecwid, but you will incur transaction fees by the payment processor of your choosing (typically Square, Paypal and other payment processors charge around 2.9 % + $0.30 per transaction). Here is an example of a Wix Ecommerce Site monthly costs when using Ecwid: $14/month - Combo Wix Website Hosting plan is sufficient for most needs + $7.99/month for an Ecwid Store Starter Plan for Wix (up to 50 products), ~ or ~ + $19.30/month for Ecwid's Professional plan: This upgraded plan includes automatic tax calculation, and up to 2500 products. + Order Payment Fees: Payment processing typically costs 2.9 % + $0.30 per transaction The reason to pair Ecwid with Wix for an ecommerce store is simple: Wix has an amazing WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor for full control over your webpages' designs, and combining it with Ecwid's customizable shopping cart is a great match. Shopify is another platform that is very robust and customizable for ecommerce, but it cannot (yet) be integrated with Wix, so Ecwid is a great solution if you have ecommerce needs beyond what Wix Stores can currently do. Here are some screenshots below to show Ecwid Options with Wix: Ecwid Pricing & Features when added to Wix as the Shopping Cart: Here are some Ecwid shipping options to show the custom options they have: In Ecwid, you can also add custom fields, date pickers and text fields to each product's page to further customize the checkout process: If you're in need of a Wix Website Designer for your next website, please reach out for a free estimate.

I had a client call me because they were happy that I specialized in designing websites on the Wix platform. The client found Wix to be very easy to setup their initial simple website, and now they wanted an expert Wix Designer to help with a redesign to make it more user-friendly while making it look more professional and polished. They said that one of the other website designers they approached said that “Wix was cheating!” and suggested alternative platforms. Ha! That's pretty funny. I believe that when you find a tool that makes things easier, go for it! I am a long-time Website Designer, and I started on Wix many years back after they had changed from a Flash-based platform to HTML5. I was planning on building my client's website in Wordpress as I typically was using for many websites in addition to Shopify. I had a design created in Photoshop, and so I was going to work on customizing a Wordpress template to work with my design. My husband told me about Wix, mentioning that his friend built his band website on the platform and really liked it. So, I thought, what the heck, why not try it out? I was dreading having to battle Wordpress templates and coding and css to recreate my design, so I was excited to try something new. I then proceeded to build the homepage in an afternoon –Wix's drag-and-drop WYSIWYG* editor was amazing! Wordpress would have taken much, much longer (and lots of coding) to recreate the homepage design. Designing in Wix was like designing in a design program like Illustrator or Photoshop. I was blown away. I was immediately hooked. It did cross my mind: "This is too easy." But the fact that Wix is fairly easy to use is an amazing thing! In Wix, I was able to really play more with the design, having full control over elements placed on the page – I could design any graphics I needed and drop them in as PNGs or JPGS, and add any images desired, too. It really was like designing in Adobe Illustrator. Very different than any website editing platform I'd seen before. I was even more impressed by the Mobile Editor, which allowed me to shuffle, resize, and hide or place the desktop items wherever I wanted in a mobile vertical layout. No more fussing with the rigid “responsive” Wordpress templates, which flowed into a mobile format without much control of size, placement, or order unless you were a wiz at css coding. In Wix, I now had full control over the mobile website elements so I could design for the best user experience. I loved it. When I built my first Wix websites for clientsabout 7 years ago, Wix was still missing a few key features such as customizable page URLs, and other SEO functionality, however, Wix has never stopped improving the platform. They added all the essential SEO features soon after I designed my first Wix website, and they continue to regularly add lots of other great functionality to their platform. Wix is quickly becoming a new standard website platform in 2021 going into 2022. Both small and Large companies are finding that Wix is a great platform for easy maintenance and updates for their company websites. Many stores are starting to offer ecommerce through Wix as well. More and more website designers and graphic designers are discovering Wix everyday. While there is still a residual snobbish attitude in the website developer world regarding Wix, it is slowly winning people over – once you try it, you'll understand why it's amazing. No more battling with css and code to get those little design elements “just right.” No more designing a website in Photoshop only to compromise your design when trying to recreate it in a Wordpress template. No more frustrated clients who are afraid to even touch their website as it's so hard to edit. Wix really has changed the website design and editing platform game. Want to see the wide range of website design styles Wix websites can have? View some of the Best Wix Websites » These are some of the best Wix websites that show that every Wix website can be unique and stunning - you're not confined to templates! In fact, whatever template you start out with can be completely changed from header to footer. Now, I will say that there is a learning curve on Wix, the more you work in it, the more you figure out the best ways to do things in the design and functionality. Website Designers and Graphic Designers like myself pickup the platform easily as we're used to design programs and understand website design, and can adapt to Wix's easy to use tools and editor. If you're not a designer, it's often difficult to build a Wix website from start to finish and be happy with it, but any non-designer can be easily trained on editing their own website once it's built by a Wix expert. I train all my clients on how to edit their websites so they can keep them updated easily and just come back to me if they have new design or functionality needs. Wix also offers Velo Code, which allows you to code pages with elements such as dynamic repeater items that pull data from a store or blog. The sky is the limit with Velo Code on Wix, and it opens the doors to a lot more customization of a Wix website when needed. So, is using Wix to build a website cheating? No way. If you find a tool that saves time and creates a better end product, go with it! I hope that other platforms will be inspired by Wix's easy to use editor and start improving their own platforms to have drag-and-drop WYSIWG editors so that everyone can easily edit their website. No one should have to go through the pain and time-suck of a hacked Wordpress site or conflicting plugins. Wix is a secure, easy-to-use platform that works great across all devices. It is perfect for 90% of my client needs! I do still work in other platforms such as Wordpress and Shopify when needed (Shopify is quite robust with custom ecommerce features, whereas Wix is just starting to come into it's own with ecommerce and still has some limitations), but most of my clients are now on Wix and they don't look back. Want to work with a professional Wix Website Designer? Reach out for a free estimate . Happy Wixing! *WYSIWG: What you see is what you get.

As a Shopify Website Designer, occassionally there are issues with Shopify – for example, today we had a short website outage on one of our client's Shopify websites, where the web pages were giving an error message: Shopify Website Error text: "There was a problem loading this website. Try refreshing the page. If the site still doesn't load, lease try again in a few minutes." I reached out to Shopify support, and they said there was a short outage today that caused this error and for my client's Shopify website to go down, and to try reloading again. Luckily, the outage was resolved quickly and the website was back up. I was worried that I may have somehow broken the Shopify site (unlikely), so I was glad to know it was a Shopify outage and not something wrong with our website. It resolved within about 15 minutes (of course, it was fixed by the time I got through to Shopify Chat support, where they had me reload and see that it was fixed.) Glad it was a short blip, we were working on sending out an email newsletter when we noticed the issue. For future reference, if you have any problems with your Shopify website, and you're not sure if it's just your site, or Shopify servers, here is Shopify's status page that shows if there are any active outages: www.shopifystatus.com This is a good website to check if you are experiencing outages on your Shopify website, and I'm putting this link here in case this happens again down the road, I can check it!

As a Wix Website Designer, I sometimes run into issues that stump me. Today, I ran into this issue with client website's Repeater Dataset not being able to connect to their Events.. here's the solution. Wix Issue: When I tried to edit my Events dataset for my Repeater, in the Dataset Settings panel it gave me an error: "This collection is unavailable. Go to Advanced Settings in the Content Manager to show hidden Wix App Collections. Create a collection with the same name to restore a deleted collection." I could not for the life of me find where the Advanced Settings were in the Content Manager, so I scheduled a call back from Wix's excellent phone support team to help. They took awhile to figure it out (she had to put me on hold for about 10 minutes) but eventually they found where the Advanced Settings were. Here's how to get to it: In the Wix Editor, click on the Content Manager icon on the bottom right of the icon menu. Click on any collection, doesn't matter which, to launch the Content Manager window In the new Content Manager window, in the top middle-left you'll see the breadcrumb links, click on Content Manager to go up to the main Content Manager page. Then click on More Actions dropdown and choose Advanced Settings Here is where you can turn on the Wix App Collections Why the Wix App Collection was suddenly turned off on my client site is a mystery, though I suspect because Wix support said that this is a new feature, maybe it defaults to off? If so, this is the solution to allow them to be available to connect to Repeater Datasets. Here are screenshots to follow if you don't have time to watch the video above: If you see this "Collection is not available" error: To get to Advanced Settings in the Wix Editor, click on the Content Manager icon on the bottom right of the icon menu: Click on any collection, doesn't matter which, to launch the Content Manager window: In the new Content Manager window, in the top middle-left you'll see the breadcrumb links, click on Content Manager to go up to the main Content Manager page: Then click on More Actions dropdown and choose Advanced Settings: Here is where you can turn on the availability of the Wix App Collections: And that fixes it! ... View more Wix Tips in my Wix Designer Blog » Happy Wixing!

As a Website Designer, I advise all my clients to just say no to pop ups on websites*! Many marketers will push you to try to increase your contact lists, and website pop ups with email signup forms seem like a good way to get people to notice and signup. A email subscription pop up on a website's homepage IS going to get noticed. But it will be noticed as it is annoying, most viewers immediately look for the X close button to remove the barrier so that we can continue viewing the website. Or, if users are required to signup in order to view the content (such as many news outlet websites these days), people may just use the back button and go elsewhere. Showing a popup when the main page content loads is incredibly intrusive. Think about it, the viewer has not even had the time to get to know what the website and your business is about before it's asking them to leave their personal information. And, if they are already a member or email subscriber, it is just an unnecessary interruption. This is not a good way to treat a new customer or a returning customer! Sure, it's good to have an email newsletter subscribe form somewhere on your homepage (or a button to it), but it doesn't need to block the entire screen and keep your viewers from doing what they wanted to do: such as find your phone number, buy a product, fill out the contact form for a service order, find your location, read an article, see what products you offer... the list goes on and on. Don't pop up a signup form interrupting their experience, it's rude and aggressive. *Note: Website pop ups are fine to use IF they are activated by the user. For example, your website could have a Signup for our Newsletter button that, when clicked, opens a pop up that has the subscribe form, so the user doesn't have to leave the page they're on. Or, you can have pop ups that provide more details on a product or service, activated only by the user when they click on a button or image to learn more. Best Practices for Pop Ups on Websites: So be nice, and let your website visitors VIEW your website instead of blocking them with an annoying pop up.

As a Wix Website Designer, I sometimes run into strange bugs or issues and figure out solutions to them. So I like to share them in this blog in case anyone else runs into the same mysterious issues! Here is the latest issue I ran into: I have a Speech Therapy App client that has a simple Repeater on their Apps page which was hidden/all white in the live website in my browser, but in the editor looks fine. Other computers and my phone also had no problem viewing it. We were not using Velo, and I couldn't figure out why in my my browsers on an iMac the repeater on the page was showing up blank. Well, I figured out the solution, read on below... Missing Repeater Fix / Solution: I figured out how to "fix" the hidden repeater so that it shows up in my browsers now, I simply removed the Animation from the repeater box, and now it shows up fine. Once I set the animation from "Fade-in" to "None" in the repeater's box element, the repeater loaded fine in my browsers. It is as if the animation is getting stuck on my browsers, so a repeater with animation would get stuck at the first frame. I could roll over the items and see my cursor turn to a hand indicating an object was there, but it was just blank white on my screen. Once the animation was removed, the repeater elements showed up immediately in my browser, so the animation was somehow blocking my view of it. I am using Chrome 96.0.4664.55 and Firefox 94.0.2 (latest versions as of today, Dec 6 2021) on an iMac running Big Sur, and I don't have any active ad blockers installed..so it's strange that it was somehow blocking the Wix repeater animation. I do recall having another issue with another page on this very website about 6 months back where an animated object that was supposed to fade in too and it wasn't showing up in my browsers. But I still find it strange that it didn't work on my browsers (Chrome and Firefox) where it did work for the Wix phone support person who helped me troubleshoot it, and, it also worked on my client's computer and other iMacs and testers. This was only occurring on in my iMac's browsers. I usually eliminate unnecessary animation anyway, so if removing animation from the Wix repeater fixes this issue, that is fine with me. My Advice on using Animation on Wix: I typically remove Wix animation from any elements like repeaters, as animation can slow down page loading time and can affect SEO (search engine optimization) as that animated hidden content may not be seen by search engines. Animation has it's place sometimes in website design, but overall, I avoid any animated elements on Wix websites to keep the site loading quickly and fully readable by search engines and users upon page load. I avoid using "Fade-in" or other animations on elements on Wix websites for best performance. Sometimes, these animations come in by default when adding a Repeater or other elements or if you're using a template from Wix. If you see animations, simply click on the element that is animating, click on the Animation Icon (see screenshot for reference,) and choose "None" in the animation icon. Happy Wixing!

If you're looking for a manufacturing website template, reach out to us. We design custom templates on the Wix Website platform that are easy to edit and look good, too. Here are some examples of some of the Wix templates we've designed: Manufacturing Website Template for Vapor Static Extraction System for Boulder Creek Technologies Website Design Template for a Solar Company Website Template for Colorado School of Mines Campaign Microsite Website Template designed for EmpireWorks Reconstruction Company Website Template designed for Assembly Service Looking for a website design template that is easy to edit and maintain? We build custom templates and then train clients how to edit their own website. Reach out for a free website design estimate »

Wix has animation built into it's website builder platform, so you can create interactive buttons such as these shown below from a solar company website we recently designed in this animated gif and video below: Here's the video version of it: These types of animations are relatively simple to create, I created the artwork with the house and solar panels, battery backups using some stock vector art illustrations and customizing their colors, background, adding trees and mountains to make the art custom for my client's website: sbregaelectric.com There are custom illustrations and animations on each of their main service pages. The bubbles are PNG files combined with text elements to create a rollover button effect. View some of our other Best Wix Websites for more inspiration on what can be done in Wix. The sky's the limit! Need a new Wix Website Designer? Reach out for a free estimate »

We recently designed a website for a Solar Company based in Coarsegold, California: Sbrega Electric. For the website design, we created infographic diagrams of homes with interactive animated popups that provide more information. Check out the video below to see the animation: This was created using Wix's animation features, which are fun to use for subtle interactive animation that engages the viewer and provides more information. When I started working as a Website Designer, I used Macromedia Flash (later purchased by Adobe) and incorporated subtle interactive animations throughout hand-built and coded websites. Flash has long since fallen out of favor, so I'm glad Wix came along to offer HTML5 based animations in their amazing platform. Wix is still my favorite platform to work in – it has an amazing, easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor that gives designers full control over the look and feel. My clients find it easy to edit, too, and I train every client on how they can keep their own websites updated. I also provide ongoing website maintenance and updates for some clients, but I find that most clients love being able to edit their own website! Wix Websites can look good, too, and you're not limited to templates. Every website in Wix can be completely custom designed from head to footer. For more examples of the wide variety of designs that Wix websites can have, view more of our Best Wix Websites » If you're looking for an expert Wix Website Designer to work on your next website, reach out for a free estimate.

Are your Wix website's icons showing up blurry on iPhones, Droids or other mobile devices? As a Wix Website Designer, I have learned some tricks over the years on how to make your Wix website better. Here's one tip for making your website favicon looks good on mobile phones. In addition to adding a Favicon to your Wix website, there is also a way to make sure that your Wix website design uses a high resolution icon on iPhones, Droids, and other devices. Just uploading a high resolution PNG or JPG (800x800px), using Wix's Favicon setting is not enough – you also need to add some Meta Tag code to tell devices where to find the high resolution icon in the Wix Editor. Here is how to add a High Resolution Favicon to Wix Websites: (updated Oct 2021) 1a. First, upload a photo to your Wix media library so you have an image URL of your high resolution Favicon to use in the custom code. See *** note below for more details. 1b. Open your Wix Dashboard (login to wix.com), then select your website (if you have multiple sites). Once you have a website selected, you should see a lefthand menu, click on Settings near the bottom of the menu. See screenshot below and video below. Here's the video to show you where to find the Custom Code area: 2. In Settings, scroll down to see the Advanced box, and click on Custom Code and click on the small right arrow on the right to open. 3. Click on Add Custom Code This will launch a window with your Code Settings: Enter the following code: ***Note: You DO need to replace the above image URL in the quotation marks. See how to upload and use an image URL on Wix below. Name your code with something like "HighRes Favicon Custom Code", choose to Load code once on All Pages, and Place Code in Head. Scroll down to see all these settings. 3. Click "Apply" and Publish your Wix website for it to go live. ***How do you find your Wix image's URL? The image URL from step 3 must be from an image that is hosted at Wix. You can upload your 800x800 PNG file then use the media library browser to find your image, then rollover the enlarge icon and then right click on the image to copy the image URL, and replace the URL in the above code with your specific image's URL. Or, you can also place the image on your site, open the Live site, and then right-click on the image and choose "Copy image address" or "Copy image Location" to get the image's URL. See this example below of what a typical image URL from Wix looks like: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/139de8_20dec007afc1436cb02df5f2b00694b7.png/v1/fill/w_252,h_252,al_c,lg_1/139de8_20dec007afc1436cb02df5f2b00694b7.png Add the customized code to your meta tags in the SEO settings of your Wix website Site Manager, and then make sure to PUBLISH to apply the changes and this will make it so that your website favicon shows up in high resolution on devices. Looking for an expert Wix Website Designer? Contact us for a free estimate »

As a Wix Website Designer, I often help clients move their websites to the Wix platform from other hosting providers. Wix is so much easier to edit and design, so this is a frequent request. Sometimes, clients also want to move their domain registration to Wix at the same time to keep things simple. I was just working on sending instructions to a client about transferring a domain from Network Solutions to Wix – but then I discovered that we can’t transfer domains from Network Solutions to Wix. Why? Read on.... It is true, you cannot transfer Network Solutions registered domains to Wix because apparently Wix is a reseller of Network Solutions Domains. This is news to me! I’ve transferred other domains from GoDaddy and other registrars to Wix, before, so this was a surprise. It’s too bad because it's nice to have it all in one place! I suppose one could transfer a Network Solutions domain to GoDaddy or another registrar first and THEN transfer it to Wix, but that would take some time and work to transfer it twice (considering transferring process takes about 10 days). I wonder if they may make this possible down the road? Typically to transfer a domain to Wix you have to request the domain from the registrar that you want to move it too, unlock the domain on the current registrar’s end, then verify the transfer through a series of emails from the registrar and ICANN to verify that the transfer is authorized and legitimate. It typically takes about 10 days for this process and a couple of email steps to verify the transfer. Many of my clients keep their domain at Network Solutions and GoDaddy even though their site is hosted on Wix simply because transferring it is a more involved process, so it’s ok to leave it there, it’s just a bummer as clients will have two places to monitor their domain and website billing, rather than one. Anyway, just wanted to share this! Looking for help moving your website to Wix? We design the best Wix websites! Contact us for a free website design estimate.

Here are some of our best Wix Websites we've designed recently, we'll be adding more websites to this collection as we design more Wix websites in 2022, so stay tuned! Looking to work with an experienced Wix Website Designer? Contact us today for a free estimate »

As a Website Designer and Graphic Designer, I like to share useful tools to help make your design life easier. Here's a great search feature of Google to reverse find images: Google Images. For example, if you have a low resolution image provided by a client and you want to see if there is a higher resolution version available, this is a great tool. I use Google images to help find larger versions of images, most often when a client has provided an image but they don't have a large version of it, IF it exists out on the web, I can quickly search to see if there is a larger version on the web. If it's a stock image, I can then purchase the higher resolution version if needed. In this video below, I was able to find a larger version of a film still for a Denver Film Festival catalog design. Note: Make sure to get permission or purchase images found on Google, just because they're on Google, this doesn't mean that they're necessarily free to use. Happy designing!

If you're looking for an experienced Wix Website Designer to help design your website, reach out! Check out some of our Best Wix Websites or view our Wix Website Portfolio to see some of our recent website design work in Wix. Or view some of the websites we've designed below: Contact us today for a free Wix Website Design Estimate »

As a Wix Website Designer, I get a lot of questions from other designers and clients, here's a recent question about Wix Mobile Optimization: “Is there any way around pretty much starting from scratch when you switch to Mobile view? Feels like Wix doesn't provide any common sense arrangement or re-sizing for you, which means you pretty much have to make the whole site twice?” Answer: Yes, you mostly do have to redesign each Wix webpage for mobile, although not entirely. Wix does have an “Page Layout Optimizer” on the mobile view at the bottom of the left-hand side toolbar, as seen below. But, while it works to some degree, this tool is rudimentary, and I typically will use it first, and then work through the page to resize and move things/hide elements as desired to make it cleaner. Remember, robots aren’t designers! The Page Layout Optimizer helps, but it limited and cleaning it up with your designer eye is best for each page. The header and footer will remain the same from page to page in mobile, so you only need to edit them once. Then, you can work through the page content on each page to make sure it looks as best as possible on mobile. While it is more time consuming to have to touch up the design of every page on a Wix website, it sure is nice to truly have full control of every page’s design and look on mobile. In the cases of Wordpress and Shopify, you don't have as much control over each page's mobile layout, so you can't resize things as desired or hide elements easily, making those mobile pages more clunky and not as user-friendly. Wix allows you to have much more control over all your mobile pages so you can really customize them to have a good user experience, which in my opinion, is a win. Here are some Wix Website Mobile Editing Tips: Wix mobile site not displaying correctly? Make sure to look at your mobile editor to work on making your Wix website's mobile view as user-friendly as possible. Need help? Looking for a Wix Website Designer? I provide free estimates for website design, and I also offer training in my Wix Website Design packages to teach you how to use your own website to easily keep it updated with new content. Reach out for a free estimate »

We are a Catalog Design Company based in Denver, Colorado. We work with small businesses and larger businesses to design product catalogs. We love working with seed companies, garden catalogs, solar companies and other environmentally-friendly businesses. Online Catalog Designer Many of our clients are not local, so we work online and over the phone to design catalogs for different product companies. We will review design concepts with clients over the phone or using Zoom or Skype so that we can finalize the design suggestions, and we also provide proofs to review and finalize before printing. If you need a Catalog Designer, contact us today for a free estimate. We design everything from small 4 page catalog brochures to 100+ page product catalogs. We also have some great online catalog printer recommendations if you don't have a local printer in mind. Catalog Design Services For catalog design, we offer graphic design, infographic design, diagram design, chart design, and print production, so we can handle everything from start to finish. We also are meticulous at reviewing the print-ready documents for any mistakes and make sure to do print production to ensure that the catalog prints perfectly. Contact us today for a free estimate on your Catalog Design.

As a Website Designer, I like to share problems and solutions that I run into as I work on client websites. I wanted to share this GoDaddy SSL / DNS issue, as I couldn't find any support forums with any info on this specific problem we ran into: I have a client with a Wordpress WooCommerce site hosted with WPEngine, but the domain and DNS is setup at GoDaddy – originally GoDaddy hosted the Wordpress site, but we were having a lot of issues with slow page loading times and corrupt databases, so we moved to WPEngine for faster loading and less problems in 2019. This morning, my client tried to login to the site and it was going to our old GoDaddy hosted version of the site from 2019. Naturally, she panicked and called me. They had also received an email this morning from GoDaddy saying that their SSL certificate was issued (renewed), see it on the right. So, I chatted with GoDaddy and WPEngine support, and, of course, while I was chatting, the website seemed to have reverted back to the correct WPEngine hosted website! Since it resolved itself after a couple of hours with no changes from us, I assumed that this was caused by the SSL certificate automatically renewing and getting issued this morning. At least, that’s all I could think that may have caused the temporary change to point to our old GoDaddy hosted Wordpress site while the SSL certificate was updating… So I just asked GoDaddy chat support and they confirmed that yes, the SSL certificate change may have caused this. Go figure!  It just happened to be that the client tried to login during the SSL renewal process this morning, when the site was temporarily going to the GoDaddy servers. Murphy’s Law, right?! That was an hour of chatting and frustration wasted. But that's why I'm posting this here for any others who run into this – if you get a SSL Certificate is Ready email from GoDaddy, and your site is hosted elsewhere, there may be a few hours of downtime while the SSL populates. Also, we realized that we also didn't even need the GoDaddy SSL cert anymore for the site, as WPEngine Hosting provides the SSL as part of their hosting plan that we were using. This SSL on GoDaddy is no longer being used, but when it was propagating it must have defaulted the DNS settings back to GoDaddy temporarily somehow. Who knows, the mystery of the internet! But we will cancel that SSL cert going forward on GoDaddy since we're no longer using it! This client's GoDaddy account has several other domains associated with it, so we left the domain registered there.

2021 Update: Wix has had SSL in place now for several years, it comes standard with every Wix hosted website. Which is great, because you need to have a https:// secured domain in order for Google to rank you well, and to avoid users getting security errors when visiting the website. How long does a Wix SSL certificate take? Keep in mind, when a Wix website is launched by connecting your domain, the SSL certificate that makes your website secure at a https:// domain typically takes up to 48 hours to propagate. I thought I would use my Wix blog to list my most wanted Wix features. Wix is great about adding new features regularly, such as the newly added and long awaited "smart urls" which allow us to fully customize the domain url of each page. Another long awaited feature that comes standard on every other website hosting service is the ability to add a SSL certificate to Wix websites. currently this is not available on Wix. This means that collecting any form information through Wix websites is not fully secure. While the Wix Store has SSL protection on the payment pages (the ecommerce platform takes users to a ssl area outside of the main website domain in the checkout pages), the regular Wix contact forms are not secured by ssl. This also means that any third party form tools, such as Jotform, if embedded on a Wix website will not be secured by a ssl (https://) domain. This doesn't give users a secure experience, so I hope that Wix adds this as an addon feature to their hosting very soon.

2021 Wix SSL Update: I just stumbled across this old 2016 post, Wix did indeed release SSL to all hosting plans back in 2016/2017 – so all Wix websites now have SSL and https, which is essential for SEO and usability. How long does a Wix SSL certificate take? Keep in mind, when a Wix website is launched by connecting your domain, the SSL certificate that makes your website secure at a https:// domain typically takes up to 48 hours to propagate. Original 2016 post: I'm excited to report that my website, www.picklewix.com, is part of the SSL Beta test group – so you can now see that my website has a https:// URL. Kudos for Wix adding this feature, having SSL installed on your website helps with SEO, as Google and other search engines have announced that they will favor websites that are SSL encrypted. In 2014, Google representatives announced they would reward sites using HTTPS encryption with a boost in search results, resulting in better referral data, and a possible ranking boost. While Wix is still beta testing this feature, I expect it will be released to be utilized on all Wix websites soon. Thanks, Wix Wizards!!

2021 Update: I just stumbled across this old 2016 post, Wix did indeed release SSL to all hosting plans back in 2016/2017 – so all Wix websites now have SSL and https, which is essential for SEO and usability. How long does a Wix SSL certificate take? Keep in mind, when a Wix website is launched by connecting your domain, the SSL certificate that makes your website secure at a https:// domain typically takes up to 48 hours to propagate. Original 2016 post: I have the inside scoop and it looks like Wix may be releasing the ability for Wix websites to have SSL applied to domains soon! At least, they appear to be testing SSL currently! That means that soon you can have a Wix website design with https:// in the domain, which means the page is secure. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral. The Wix platform doesn't currently offer SSL, which means it's not good to take any information on forms on websites currently. But it's on it's way! YAY! Having an SSL certificate installed on your website's domain is also good for SEO, as Google and other search engines are now favoring SSL websites (https://) over those without, as SSL is a further form of verification that a business and website is legit. Looking for more SEO tips? Check out my SEO Hero website »

Here are some common questions about SSL Certificates on Wix: Why is my Wix SSL certificate not working? How long does the Wix SSL take? If you just launched your website and connected your domain, the SSL certificate that makes your website secure at a https:// domain typically takes up to 48 hours to propagate. So, if you launched your website on Monday afternoon, you may have to wait until Wednesday afternoon to see the SSL / https activated. This means that the website will not have https/SSL security for up to 48 hours after launching a website on Wix, and may prompt users with a warning (see screenshot above) that the site is not at a secure domain. This will resolve itself, just be patient for the 48 hours. If you already have a domain registered through a third-party such as Network Solutions or GoDaddy, and you point the domain's DNS settings to the Wix servers, this 48 hour propagation period still applies before the SSL certificate shows up. From what I hear from many other Wix Designers, 48 hours is the norm with Wix SSL propagation. How do I get my SSL certificate from Wix? It comes automatically with any paid hosting plan. Does Wix give you an SSL certificate? Yes, SSL is included with any paid Wix hosting plan. Wix hosting plans range from $14-$24+ a month depending on your needs, ecommerce is on the higher end of that range. How do I enable SSL on a Wix website? You don't need to know how to add https to a Wix website, because you don't have to enable SSL, it is automatically installed when you pay for any Wix hosting plan and launch your website at a domain. It can take up to 48 hours to activate the SSL/https on newly launched Wix websites, so be patient while it propagates. Do you have more Wix questions? If you need help with Wix Website Design, I love working with small businesses. I also offer consulting on existing websites. Contact me today for a free estimate »

As a Wix Website Designer, I just wanted to say, I still love Wix! In 2021, I am still in love with Wix's platform. I design hundreds of client website in Wix as my clients love the easy-to-use editor, and I love designing the sites in Wix. I do work in other platforms such as Wordpress and Shopify, but I do find that Wix is my favorite website builder platform, and my clients love it, too. Wix performs very well with SEO as well, so I recommend it to 95% of my clients. One of the things that makes Wix great (besides their million-dollar WSIWYG website editor) is that they are constantly improving the platform. Every month I see improvements throughout the platform, and they even have a forum where Wix Designers and users can vote for new features. Wix is an ever-evolving beast of a website platform, and it just keeps getting better. Check out my Wix Designer Tips Blog for lots of great tips and updates about the Wix platform. If you're wondering if Wix websites can look good, wonder no more – check out the Best Wix Websites we've recently designed to see the wide range of what Wix websites can look like! Wix, while it comes with templates, is completely customizable from header to footer, so we can design a website that fits your exact needs and is user-friendly, too! Need a new website design? I'd love to talk with you and provide you with an estimate for a new website design. I often recommend Wix, but I will listen to your needs and make my best recommendation. I also offer Wix Training so you can keep editing your own Wix website going forward. Contact me today for a free website design estimate » Happy Wixing!

As a Wix Designer, I like to train my clients on how to use the Wix editor. Here are some quick tips for editing your Wix mobile website, including how to find hidden elements in the mobile editor, how to resize and make space between elements, and how to use fast keys to tab through the various elements to find overlapping or missing elements. To tab through elements in Wix: Use Wix Keyboard Shortcut: Command-M on Mac (Control-M on PC) This will select items and as you continue to hit Command-M it will tab or "pan" through the various elements in your mobile or desktop layout in the Wix Editor. If you run into the selection box not appearing, this is a bug, and I recommend publishing your work, then quitting out of the Wix editor window and relaunching it to cure this and any other bugginess that you may encounter when editing in Wix. Wix Editor Bugs I do find that Wix starts acting up sometimes after selecting certain elements or copying and pasting objects from one page to the other, so if I run into this, I publish, close out of the editor browser window, and relaunch the editor. This usually fixes most editor bugs. I also use the most recent version of the Chrome browser, which seems to be the best (much better than Safari on Macs). Happy Wixing!

I've run into this issue when text is removed from a text box that is grouped with other items, Wix doesn't automatically resize the "group," which means it thinks it's the larger size, and it won't allow you to use the drag handle to move items in sync upwards on the page. Here's the fix: simply click on the text box, and then click on the resize handle in the middle of the bottom of the text box. This will "reset" the grouped object size so that you can more easily adjust the object page spacing as desired. For more Wix Tips, visit my Wix Designer Blog » Happy Wixing!

As a Website Designer, most of my clients have websites with Google Analytics installed on them. Often, the clients don't know the gmail email login to access the Google Analytics, which is problematic if we want to view the statistics on the site, and, if we want to install the same Google Analytics account on their new website if we're redesigning the site. But luckily, Google does provide ways to get access to Google Analytics accounts: https://support.google.com/analytics/troubleshooter/7264014

I just read an article about Wix being the Jack Of All Trades, but Master Of None – and, I disagree. Wix may be trying to be a lot of things, but there is one thing that Wix has mastered, the Website Editing Platform. Wix's WYSIWYG editor is unlike anything else on the market, and it's way ahead of it's time (or maybe everyone else is behind the times, hard to say which!) As a Website Designer for over 18 years, I have worked in nearly every website platform that existed since the internet went mainstream. I used Dreamweaver and Flash to build custom websites using code, graphics and Flash elements. I've used Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, Squarespace and other platforms over the years. And guess what? None of these platforms compare to Wix's website editor. Wix's WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor is incredible. Working is Wix is like designing in InDesign, or Photoshop, or Powerpoint vs. designing in Word. You can actually "design" in Wix – you can add and move elements around the webpage at will, and you also have nearly full control over how the same elements look on mobile. It's amazing. The first time I used Wix was in my heavy Wordpress-designing days, and I had a Photoshop file that I was going to provide to a developer to convert into a Wordpress theme. My husband had told me about Wix, as he had a friend from his band-playing days that had recently built his band website on Wix and was raving about how easy it was to use. So, I decided to check it out. I took the website design I created in Photoshop, and decided to try to build it into the Wix platform. To my surprise, in just a short afternoon, I was able to replicate my Photoshop design in Wix perfectly! I was stunned. It couldn't be this easy. I continued to build out the client's website pages in Wix, and they loved it. I was even able to train them how to make simple edits or add pages to their site, or adjust the mobile layout as desired. With Wix's website editor, I truly was blown away, I had never been able to develop a website design with such ease before. I started to build more websites in Wix, and as I learned how to master the platform, I realized there was no other platform that even compared to Wix. I ended up building picklewix.com because I wanted to get more clients who were interested in designing their websites in Wix. At the time (about 8 years ago), Wix was still nay-sayed in the website design and advertising agency community – they all believed that Wix was a amateur platform and was not as good as Wordpress. I will say, at the time when I started working in Wix, there were a lot of limitations – Wix had recently converted from a Flash-based website editor to HTML5, and there were still a lot of missing essentials including custom page URLs and SEO features. But, within a year of working on the platform, Wix started to add these features along with a lot of other improvements, and continues to do so to this day. Wix has a great Facebook forum and Wix Marketplace community – and they actually LISTEN to us designers, letting us vote on feature requests and interact with their development team to keep improving the platform. Unlike Wordpress, Shopify, and other platforms that have stagnated over the years, Wix had made leaps and bounds in improving and adding to their platform. Yes, it's true that they seem to be diving into all sorts of directions (Logo Designer, CRM, and Editor X), they continue to remain true and improve their main jewel – their Wix Website Editor – which still remains in 2021 (in my humble opinion), one of the best website editors in the business – hands down. Now, I do say that designing a Wix website does have a learning curve, but what platform doesn't? With a little training, nearly anyone can edit a Wix website easily after it's built. As an expert Wix Designer, I help work with small businesses and non-profits to develop beautiful, functional Wix websites, and then I train the clients on how they can manage and edit their websites over time. I also offer Wix SEO training – to show clients how to use the Wix platform to excel in search engines like Google. Wix websites perform exceptionally well in searches and SEO if optimized correctly. Wix websites are also so easy for people to edit and keep updated, that they naturally do well with SEO if content is being added regularly. I have tons of clients who are so excited about their Wix websites after being on Wordpress or other platforms, as they can easily update and add to their websites without having to do any updates or maintenance - they love their new Wix websites! Make sure to check out some of the Best Wix Websites that we've designed recently. So, while Wix may be diving into a lot of directions, like Google, they are a growing company. They invest back into their growth, they're always trying to improve and be better. That's a sign of a good company. I've seen Wix making big strides in the ecommerce arena, which is good, as I believe currently that is one of the biggest limitations to the platform – ecommerce. I have some clients using their ecommerce Wix Stores platform, but it is limited so it's not the best fit for every ecommerce solution currently. But, as with the SEO and other features, I see Wix asking the public for what we want, and working on improving and adding functionality – so I believe that their ecommerce platform will rival Shopify and other ecommerce platforms in the very near future. Just wait. I hope that Wix continues to listen and grow it's platform over time. I think what Wix is the master of the WYSIWG website editor platform, it allows for flexible custom design by designers without the use of code, which is a game-changer in the world of CSS and responsive themes. On Wix, you can custom design every page to your liking, where on other platforms (Wordpress, Squarespace, Shopify, etc), you are limited to the homepage and subpage theme templates unless you are good coder. Wix allows for design freedom – and, as a graphic designer and website designer, I'm in love with their platform. I hope that other platforms like Wordpress and Shopify take Wix's lead and start adding better WYSIYG editing to their platforms. I do love Shopify for ecommerce, but really wish that they had a better page editor so we had more control over each page's design. But I think it's coming (if these platforms are smart). So, is Wix the jack of all trades? No. But they are most definitely masters of the website platform in 2021. . . . If you're looking for a website designer, feel free to reach out for a free estimate. I will make recommendations on the best platform for your needs, whether it be Wix, Shopify, Squarespace or other platforms. I design websites that suit the needs – and for nearly 90% of my clients, Wix is the perfect platform. Be assured that I will make an honest recommendation of what I think is best for your needs.

If you're wondering what a Wix Website Design would cost if you hired a Wix pro, you've come to the right place. Wix Website Design and Development usually costs between $2500-$6000+, depending on the needs (number of pages, functionality, etc). Ecommerce Wix websites can cost $5000-$8000+, depending on the complexity of the needs. Wix is the best editor available today, and I recommend it for 90% of my business client websites because it's such a great platform! Here's a few reasons why: Wix's Site Editor is hands-down the best in the business. Squarespace, Wordpress, Webydo and others don't yet compare in the ease-of-use and customization abilities, and functionality. Wix is very SEO friendly! It has all the SEO (search engine optimization) features needed to help your business get found online. Wix is secure. Unlike open-source platforms like Wordpress, it is not easily hacked into and you don't have to worry about upgrading software or installing security features. Your Wix hosting team is taking care of all that for you. Wix also releases new features weekly, and you get to use all most of the new tools without having to "upgrade" or switch plans. Wix has SSL included! Secure websites (with https) are now starting to be required by Google, so it's great that is included in all Wix hosting plans, no extra cost or hassle! Wix makes it super easy to add Video, sound, image galleries and slideshows anywhere on your website. Wix has phone tech support, you can schedule a call back from one of their friendly techs, and they can help answer questions and help you resolve issues if needed. Wix's template ARE NOT set in stone. Everything on the page is easily customized, from the background colors/images/videos, to text boxes, to slideshows, to video, to buttons and menus. Wix has a customizable Mobile editor using the same elements as your desktop version – but you have full control over if, how and where the elements display in the mobile view. This is much nicer than simple "responsive" layouts as you have full control over the position of any element, and you can even hide things to simplify your pages for mobile viewers. View Wix Pricing to see what the hosting plans cost, Wix is surprisingly affordable for website hosting that includes a million-dollar editor platform! Need a Wix Website Designer? We can help you get your site designed, setup properly, optimized for SEO (search engine optimization), and train you on how you can keep your website updated and add pages or blog posts over time. I can't say enough good things about Wix. It isn't the platform for 100% of all businesses, as some have more customized database needs or sophisticated ecommerce requirements – contact me I can tell you if Wix is the best platform for your needs and budget. Looking for a Wix Website Design Cost Estimate? Let me know if you’d like to talk more about your specific website design needs and I can put together a free Wix Website Design Cost Estimate based on your wishlist. Call 720.260.3541 or contact me online »

Looking for a freelance infographic designer? I work with organizations and businesses to create infographics to visually communicate an easy-to-understand overview of a topic, service or idea. Infographic design includes imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic. I work with clients to establish the information needed to communicate in a graphic, and then I will work on designing infographic concepts for review. Often, we mix and match concepts or graphics from the infographic concepts to finalize a direction and overall look and feel. Whether you're looking for a simple infographic design or a complex infographic, I'd be happy to talk to you more about your needs. Please reach out if you're interested in an Infographic Design estimate » Infographics are a great tool that allows viewers to easily digest information with the use of visual data, charts, and statistics. Below are some of my recent infographic design projects to give you an idea of the range of how infographics can look: Often, I sketch out ideas for the infographic to get an idea of the overall layout and information, here's some quick initial sketches below for a Salon Forest documentary to inform viewers of the many ways that salmon and preservation contributes to the economy and wildlife in the area. See the finalized infographic design chosen further below. Here is an example of a School Infographic: Farmer's Market Infographic poster: Design for a complex school infographic: Infographic Design for Renewal Energy Smart Grid for New Energy Colorado, to be used as a website infographic in their header: Infographics work great for poster design, annual report design, and website design. Wix Website Designer If you want a website with infographics integrated in, I also am a website designer and can design infographics for a beautiful website for your business, organization or portfolio. Looking to work with a freelance infographic designer? Please reach out if you're interested in an Infographic Design estimate »

Here's a Wix Pro Designer Tip: If you are in the Wix Editor, and you're looking for an element that's hidden or behind other objects and you can't find it, here's the easy key command or fast key to quickly tab through each element on your page. This is also very useful for finding mobile elements. Use Wix Keyboard Shortcut: Command-M on Mac (Control-M on PC) This will select items and as you continue to hit Command-M it will tab or "pan" through the various elements in your mobile or desktop layout in the Wix Editor. Here's a Wix Designer Tutorial video demonstrating this tabbing tip, as well as a few more Mobile Editing tips for Wix:

As a Wix Website Designer, I often will customize the blog for my clients. Here's some quick tips on making the Category Menu all caps, change the "All Posts" text, as well as how to change the font and color. Looking for an expert Wix Website Designer? I love working with small businesses, and I design and build out full websites, then train my clients on how to edit and use their own website once we complete the design. I also offer SEO (search engine optimization) to help your website get found. Contact me today for a free estimate.

As a Wix Website Designer, I often train clients on how the menu works, and how to change the spacing or design. Here is how you can edit Wix menu spacing between items, as well as the design, or show and hide pages from your menu. For example, to evenly space your menu items, turn off the "All items are the same size" setting in the Menu Layout tab to keep the space between each page name even in the menu. This also maximizes the space you can use, so you can fit more menu items if desired. Want help from a Wix Web Designer? I love working with small businesses, and I train my clients on how to edit and use their own website once we complete the design. Contact me today for a free estimate.

As a Wix Website Designer, I am a huge fan of the Wix website platform. The Wix Editor is a dream come true for designers used to working in Photoshop, InDesign or Illustrator – it allows you to customize the design of nearly every page with ease and a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get.) They also have Wix Stores and Ecwid for ecommerce, to allow for easy-to-manage online stores to be added on any Wix website. One thing I find lacking in Wix Stores, however, is a complete receipt upon checkout. Currently, the final Thank You Page in checkout only shows the Order Amount Total and an Order Number, it does not display the Order Summary that shows what products/quantities that they ordered. On this note, you CAN customize the Thank you page of the checkout by adding more content above or below the order review, so there IS some customizability to the page, but currently you cannot "turn on" an Order Summary to include the Products/Quantities ordered, which is an important part of a thank you receipt page. I've sent this feedback to Wix, I hope this is an easy addition. An more complete order review page is standard on Shopify and other ecommerce platforms, so I hope it is something Wix Stores can offer soon! I know they're always working on improving the platform, so I'm sure it will be something they will offer soon.

These new Wix ads made me laugh – they illustrate EXACTLY why Wordpress sites drive my clients and myself nuts. Watch the Wix ad videos lower in this post below... I have been a Website Designer for over 16 years, and I've worked on way too many Wordpress sites during that time. When I discovered Wix in 2015, it was just coming into it's own after changing from being Flash-based to being HTML5-based, a game changer. And boy, it's come a long way in the past 6 years, all of my initial concerns with the platform have been resolved by Wix over time (SEO functionality, custom URLs, ability to customize with code), and now I believe it to be a very robust platform that works for 95% of my client's website design needs. While I don't think that Wix needed to highlight Wordpress issues in their commercials... as Wix is already earning the support of website designers like me all over the globe because of their amazing editor... without having to nay-say other platforms... I must admit, these ads nailed it on the head. It's true. Wordpress sites are a constant hassle. If you're not busy enough updating plugins and the WP software on a regular basis, you're dealing with hackers getting in and posting spammy links in your code, or plugins getting outdated or conflicting with each other. It's an ongoing battle to keep Wordpress sites clean and functional. Any business owner with Wordpress for their website will relate to any of these ads: I can't tell you how many of my website design clients come to me as they have existing Wordpress sites that are stale, broken, hacked, or have outdated versions or plugins, conflicting plugins, the list goes on... Many clients share that it's just plain impossible for them to understand how to edit their Wordpress websites so they let them get stagnate and outdated for years. Many Wordpress website business owners are afraid they'll break the website if they try to do the updates themselves, which is true – you better know what you're doing if you start fooling around with the updates. A simple update can turn into a couple hours of troubleshooting if anything goes wrong. And sometimes, your Wordpress's website hosting provider won't let you update due to PHP or other server limitations so you can't update at all. Frustrating, to say the least. It is possible to keep a Wordpress website healthy and up-to-date, but it's an ongoing process, and it's best to backup your site files and databases before casually clicking the "Update" button in your WP dashboard... JUST in case you need to restore anything if it breaks the website or if the website is hacked. And, you should know how to restore backups if, indeed, the updates should cause any issues. Fun times, let me assure you. It's of course possible to keep a Wordpress site healthy, but unless you're a WP developer, the constant need for software and plugin updates are time-consuming and daunting at best. Worst of all, all of this extra time isn't even spent on keeping your website content updated – the updates are just to keep the site running smoothly and from getting hacked. If you don't update the content on your actual website, your website becomes stale and doesn't perform as well in the rankings of Google and other search engines. I find that many business-owner's Wordpress websites tend to get stagnant because clients simply can't figure out how to edit them easily or comfortably. Many of my clients with Wordpress feel like their website is a captive held hostage. Wix has a whole series of these new ads about Wordpress gripes: Moving Websites from Wordpress to Wix I have moved hundreds of unhappy business owners who had websites on Wordpress to Wix — and they are ecstatic when I show them the new Wix editor. After struggling with Wordpress for so long, the Wix editor is like a breath of fresh air for small business owners. Wix is perfect for restaurants, artists, law firms, tree care companies, garden centers, seed companies, bloggers, podcasts, gardening magazines, schools, colleges, non-profits, composting companies, doctor offices, and so many more types of businesses and organizations. No software or plugin updates are needed on Wix, so businesses can focus their website time updating their website with current events, info, products, classes, menus, etc. Here are some of the things I hear on a regular basis when my clients first get trained on how to edit their own Wix website that we designed for them: “Wow, this is so much more intuitive!” “Really?! There's a site history, so I don't have to worry about messing it up? AWESOME.” “Thank you so much, I'm so excited that I can handle my own website updates now.” “Yay! Now I can finally keep my own website updated!” “I love that I can change the design on each and every page on our new Wix website. On our old Wordpress site, we had a homepage template and a subpage template, so all of our subpages looked similar and the design was very limited. Now we can quickly build landing pages and change the design on any page easily and quickly, no programming or theme edits needed. I love all the image and gallery options, they are so easy to use. I'm amazed by the Wix editor, thanks for designing our modern, mobile-friendly website, and for training me so that I can make my own website changes. What a difference it makes, now I actually enjoy working on our business website!” “My Wordpress site kept getting hacked, and I paid big bucks to get it fixed repeatedly over the years. I'm so happy to have a more secure platform that doesn't need to be babysat. Now I can focus all my valuable time on posting new information about my business and products.” “I have always felt like working on my Wordpress website was like going into battle. Making simple design or content edits was like pulling teeth. I love my new Wix website, now I can change out images, backgrounds, and edit and add pages so much more easily. Thank you for building our beautiful new website and for the Wix training, I no longer feel like my website is holding my business hostage!” “Wix seems so easy, why doesn't Wordpress do something like this?” Indeed, why has Wordpress lived in the dark ages of the internet for so long? I think Wordpress and other platforms like Shopify need to step up their game and create and offer better options for a securely hosted WYSIWG page editor for ease-of-use by business owners who are NOT developers. It would be nice if there was an option for Wordpress to be hosted with security put into place and automatic updates regularly, so it's behind the scenes –and not on the shoulders of the business owner, who rarely has time or the know-how to stay on top of platform updates. WPEngine (one of the best Wordpress hosts out there), and some other hosts offer some support for automatically updates and backups of Wordpress sites, which is good, but most of the WP clients who come to us are not hosted servers that offer this service. Additionally, Shopify's and Wordpress's themes are difficult to change for anyone but a website developer/programmer. Wordpress's attempts to add WSIWYG editing such as with their blocks and other editor improvements have been poor at best. The Wordpress backend still feels like an outdated clunky blog, and the constant software/plugin updates needed are a pain for most small businesses. Want to know what Wix sites can look like? Above are some examples of some of our Best Wix Websites » Wix websites are not set to any theme or template, and each and every page can be custom designed. Editing in Wix is similar to editing in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, you have abilities to add and place elements such as images, galleries, videos, text boxes, buttons, full image or video backgrounds, and so much more. You can move, resize or reorder any of these elements by simply dragging and dropping where you want them to be, very much like other design programs. And, you have full control over the mobile view of your website, which means you can reorder, resize, hide/show various elements from desktop in a vertical format that works great on phones. This makes it much easier to control what your mobile viewers see, rather than relying on the automated responsive themes of Wordpress that shuffle into mobile vertical format that is typically out of your control (unless you're a developer). You may want to change the order, or size or even visibility of elements on mobile, and in Wordpress that is often very difficult to do unless you know how to edit the theme code to customize it, a time-consuming process. Complete design control and ease-of-editing (not to mention the lack of having to update the platform) is what makes Wix stand apart. Anyone can be trained and learn how to edit a Wix website, and no ongoing maintenance is needed. While Wix may not be easy to design and set one up from scratch — hiring an expert Wix Designer is often your best bet if you're not an experienced web designer — but once they're designed and setup, editing a well-designed Wix websites is a breeze. We train all of our clients on how to use their new Wix websites so they can take the ball and run with it. To circle back to the Wix Ads... So while I don't believe negative advertising is the best way to approach things, I do think a lot of Wordpress-website business owners will relate to these new 2021 Wix ads and will likely even consider switching to Wix if it makes their lives easier. After all, who has time for fixing conflicting plugins, website hacks, and software updates? Why not instead spend valuable time keeping the website updated with new products, information, news and good SEO blog posts to help the website get found and succeed? That's what Wix offers, my clients can now spend their time improving and adding to their site, rather than struggling to edit or fix it. Thanks, Wix! You've changed the game. Hopefully Wordpress will see the issues that Wix's ads highlight as useful, constructive feedback, and they will work on improving the platform to be easier to edit, easier to maintain, and more secure. Competition is a good thing, and as all platforms adapt and improve over time with user experience in mind, hopefully they will all inspire each other to do better. I would be excited to see a true WYSIWG editor added to platforms like Wordpress and Shopify in the future! On this note, check out this great letter to Wordpress creator Matt Mullenweg from Wix’s CEO, Avishai Abrahami, in response to Mullenweg's harsh post about Wix's new ads. I love everything he had to say. For now, I've switched from Wordpress to Wix for all my sites, and I must admit, I don't want to go back. P.S. Check out some of my related posts on this topic: Is Wix better than Wordpress? Wix is to Powerpoint as Wordpress is to Word » View some of our Best Wix Websites » Looking for a Wix Designer? I love working with small businesses. Contact me today for a free design estimate » One last note: I also still work in Wordpress, and I often recommend Shopify for complex ecommerce needs, but Wix is a great fit for 95% of my clients. Wix also has a couple shopping cart options, which can work for some needs – but I can give you an honest recommendation on whether Wix, Shopify, or Wordpress is best for your needs. I do work with the BEST Wordpress developer who is local and super easy to work with as well, so I count on her when working on Wordpress websites for clients. I don't often recommend Wordpress anymore, especially for clients with smaller budgets, which is surprising since I used to work on so many Wordpress sites over the years. If clients have much bigger ongoing budgets with highly complex custom needs, Wordpress may be a better fit, but most clients don't need anything fancy, they just want a beautiful, easy-to-use editable website that doesn't require costly development and constant babysitting, and Wix is just that. Contact me today for a free Website Design consultation »

As a Website Designer, I work in Shopify for some of my ecommerce website clients. Here is a quick tip on how setup a Shopify Discount code link that will go to a specific Collection or Product on the website. Currently, Shopify doesn't allow you to specific that the discount codes links could go to a specific product or collection, which is difficult for users to use if you can't get them to the Collection or Product that is on sale with the automated discount-applying link. So here is the workaround: Use the discount permalink that Shopify provides, and add a redirect. For example, if you wanted to link your automatically-applied discount code to go to a specific product, you'd use: https:///discount/?redirect=/products/ Or, if you wanted to link to a specific collection, you'd use: https:///discount/?redirect=/collections/ Here is a real example for some Free Watermelon Seeds at Sandia Seed: https://www.sandiaseed.com/discount/FREESEEDS21?redirect=/collections/get-real-gardening Above is an example of the Discount Code setup in Shopify, I thought that they used to have the ability to link to a specific collection or product, but it is not available with this particular discount, which discounts their Watermelon Seeds to be free when purchased with any other seeds in their Real Good Gardening Seed Collection. So the simply adding a redirect to the end of any discount code link will do the trick. Do you need help with your website design? Get a free website design estimate »

As a Wix Website Designer, I have hundreds of reasons that I love the Wix platform for designing my clients' websites. One small reason that I love Wix is the ability to upload our own fonts. Often, my clients have branding standards that specify fonts that may not come standard in Wix's extensive list of fonts, but luckily, they make it super easy to upload your own fonts! In Wix, it's easy to upload fonts in TTF, OTF, WOFF2 or WOFF formats. The font does not have to be a web font as Wix converts it to a web font. Now, keep in mind, on websites, fonts may look a little different than in design programs (they may look thicker or thinner.) You also need to upload the font variants (italics, bold, weights, etc) in order to use the bolded or italicized versions of the fonts. Also, you don't want to go crazy uploading tons of custom fonts to your site, or use too many fonts on any page as this can slow down the loading time. Fonts do not transfer with Websites: As a Wix Designer, sometimes I will transfer sites to my client's accounts when finished (although most often I like to build the sites in my client's account to avoid problems with fonts, site members, databases, contact form submissions, or media transferring completely). So if you do this – keep in mind that when you transfer a site to another Wix account, any fonts that you have uploaded will work and be displayed correctly in the secondary account. The text with the uploaded font can be edited freely in the secondary account, however, you will not see the uploaded font in the Fonts drop-down menu inside the Editor in the secondary account. It is only displayed in the primary account in the Fonts drop-down menu. Here's a solution from Wix: To use an uploaded font in a secondary account after transferring a site: Copy the text which already has the uploaded font applied to it by selecting it and pressing Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on Mac). Double-click a new or existing text box, click where you want the text to be pasted and press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on Mac). View some of our Best Wix Websites to see the full range of how Wix websites can be designed, we use custom fonts often for many clients. Looking for an expert Wix Website Designer? I provide free estimates, contact me » Happy Wixing!

I just discovered this great tool from Wix - the Accessibility Wizard. This tool helps identify if your page is missing any H1 or H2 tags, as well as Image Alt Text to ensure your website is accessible to all. This helps not only with your website's accessibility, but it also helps with your search engine optimization (SEO), as it allows for search engines to "read" all the images on your page and identify what content is most important by the H1 and H2 tags. The best part of Wix's Accessibility Wizard is that it actually walks you through and DOES THE WORK FOR YOU. You simply choose from a dropdown of your page content to pick what text you want to be your headline (H1) and subhead (H2), and/or paste in or type the text for each image's alt text, and as you apply each, Wix does the work for you, updating the content on the page. No need to search and find every image on each page to make sure you didn't overlook the image alt text. It's also a great way to review that you didn't overlook any H1 or H2 tags on all your pages. With SEO, it's also good to weave in well-searched keyword phrases that are relevant to each page in the page Title, Description, and the body text – so this Accessibility Wizard isn't the end-all-be-all for SEO – but it is a really handy tool that allows you to quickly find and fix any missing image alt text or H1 or H2 tags throughout your Wix website.

I was talking with a friend about a local flower farm, and it make me recall a website client over 10 years ago who had a flower farm in Western Colorado called Field Florals. She had a big greenhouse and fields of flowers and grew a lot of perennials and annuals for weddings and florists. I thought it was wonderful (though I never saw her farm in person). She has since moved on to other pursuits, but boy... what a chapter to grow flowers for a living, eh? Here's a postcard design from 2011: The flower farm website, see below, was designed from scratch using Photoshop and Dreamweaver, back in the old days of the web before tablets and smart phones were born. I've worked on several farm websites since, but haven't worked on another flower farm website – I hope to work with another flower farmer someday! This website design from 2011 shown above is no longer live, but it was a fun website to work on! This was before the days of responsive design and Wordpress, where we built websites by hand. Boy has website design come a long way since then! I love that I can now build websites that my clients can easily edit, or add photos too. In the beginning of the world of websites, they were very cumbersome to edit and you had to have some knowledge of HTML and coding and programs to edit sites. Now, with great website platforms like Wix, Shopify and others, websites are much easier to edit. The Wix website platform is by far my current favorite in 2021, as it is truly a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor that is super easy to use for both website designers and website owners. I design, build and then train business owners and their staff on how to edit and update their own website with new content and info, no programming needed. I love this, as they can add more images to galleries, slideshows, add events, add blog posts, update their homepage messaging all with a few clicks instead of having to request that I make changes on a regularly basis. While I am happy to work on website updates and changes, I also love training and empowering people to edit their own websites so they don't have to ask me every time they want to make an update. This helps with business and their search engine optimization (SEO), as they can keep their website fresh with new content. To see the range of what Wix websites can look like, view our Best Wix Websites or view all of our website design work in our Website Design Portfolio » Looking for a new, easy-to-edit website design for your farm or small business? Contact us today for a free estimate »

As Wix Designers, we love working with solar companies! We just designed a new Wix website for Sbrega Electric, a solar company based in Coarsegold, CA near Fresno and Yosemite. They specialize in off-grid solar on off-grid homes, as well as backup solar power and generator design. Wish they were closer, we'd have hired them to put solar on our home! ​ We are excited to announce the launch of Sbrega Electric's new website: View their live website to see some of the subtle animations and view all the pages: www.sbregaelectric.com Each page has it's own custom version of the illustration to show some of the services they offer: Here's a full screenshot of the entire homepage: For more of my work, view my recent Best Wix Websites » Want to work with a website designer for your solar company? Get a free estimate on your website design »

I am excited to announce the launch of the new website that I designed for Colorado Gardener, with lots of great info and searchable articles from the issues: ColoradoGardener.com The homepage will be updated with each issue to highlight some of their cover articles, and it also incorporates some a few simple banner ads for some of their advertisers like garden centers and nurseries. We wanted to keep the ads subtle and not flashy and obtrusive like so many publications and newspapers are doing these days (ping-pong style popup ads and videos that cover nearly every part of the page.) Colorado Gardener is my favorite garden publication – I always want to read every single article as they are all so informative for gardening here in Colorado. If you live in Colorado and haven't seen it yet, makes sure to pick up the latest free issue of the Colorado Gardener paper at your local garden center, we have all the locations where it is available listed on their website here. Here is a video walk-through of their new gardening magazine website: Stay tuned as we add more articles from upcoming issues and past issues on all things Colorado-gardening. Surf around to see some of the subtle animated bees and hummingbirds on the pages: For more of my work, view my recent Best Wix Websites » Want to work with a website designer for your gardening business? Get a free estimate on your website design » Happy spring!

Here's a great tool to change a text list to a comma-separated values list: https://convert.town/column-to-comma-separated-list For example, changing a list of cities to a paragraph with commas separating each city: Adams County Arapahoe County Arvada Aurora Boulder Brighton Broomfield Castle Rock Castle Pines Centennial Colorado Springs Commerce City Denver Douglas County Elizabeth Englewood Erie Fort Collins Franktown Golden Greeley Greenwood Village Highlands Ranch Jefferson County Ken Caryl Lafayette Lakewood Larkspur Littleton Lone Tree Longmont Louisville Loveland Northglenn Parker Pueblo Sedalia Superior Thornton Westminster Wheat Ridge Windsor Here is the same list in a comma separated list: Adams County, Arapahoe County, Arvada, Aurora, Boulder, Brighton, Broomfield, Castle Rock , Castle Pines, Centennial, Colorado Springs, Commerce City, Denver, Douglas County, Elizabeth, Englewood, Erie, Fort Collins, Franktown, Golden, Greeley, Greenwood Village, Highlands Ranch, Jefferson County, Ken Caryl, Lafayette, Lakewood, Larkspur, Littleton, Lone Tree, Longmont, Louisville, Loveland, Northglenn, Parker, Pueblo, Sedalia, Superior, Thornton, Westminster, Wheat Ridge, Windsor As a Website Designer and Graphic Designer, I often come across great tools like this to make my design job easier and like to share them here! Often, a paragraph form of a list of cities is better to fit on webpages or in brochures, so this is an easy way to convert them!

As a Web Designer and Graphic Designer, I like to share good designer resources! I just discovered another source of great photographs that you can download and use for free on websites: burst.shopify.com Like UnSplash.com, this is a great resource for us website designers. It's always nice to find more sources of quality photos to use in website design. I design websites on Shopify and Wix primarily these days, Shopify is great for complex online stores, and Wix is great for beautiful informational sites and blogs as well as basic ecommerce needs. Looking to work with a Website Designer? Contact me today for a free website design estimate »

Are pets bad for the Environment? This Infographic Design for the Less is More organization, illustrating some of the environmental impacts of pets. We also created a taller version for sharing on Pinterest and other applications. Feel free to share and re-pin these graphics, to help spread the word that Less is More. Some of the pet facts that Less is More wanted us to illustrate in this graphic include: HOME DAMAGE Pets damage doors, door frames, and trim, chew shoes and other items, which means that they more quickly and often end up in the landfill. LOADS OF MEAT Dogs and cats eat about 25% of the total meat calories in the United States! American cats and dogs rank 5th in global meat consumption! FURNACE + AC DAMAGE Our pets’ shedding, dander and debris brought in from outside build up and clog HVAC filters and ventilation, causing them to work harder resulting in more frequent repairs and replacements. WASTE + PLASTIC Quickly destroyed toys, shoes and other items also fill our landfills. Millions of bags of feces (even in compostable bags) fill landfills and cannot break down. In just the USA alone, 83 million dogs produce 10.6 million Tons of poop a year.Most of this is getting bagged in plastic and thrown away into landfills. Our 90 million cats generate enough waste to fill more than 5,000 football fieldsten feet deep! BIRD DEATHS Cats kill up to 3.7B birds annually. About a third of the 800 species of birds in the USA are endangered, threatened or in significant decline, according to the American Bird Conservancy. LANDSCAPE DAMAGE Not only do they dig holes, dogs oftendamage or destroy plants, shrubs, trees,fences and other property. So what are things you can do to help your pets to have less impact on the environment? We know people love pets, so it's hard to quit cold turkey! But here are things you can do to cut down on the environmental impact: Leave dogs outside (giving them shelter from the heat and cold of course!) This will save your carpets, flooring, and other indoor features from the wear and tear of dogs. This also allows them to go to the bathroom, keeping unwanted accidents from happening inside the house. Most dogs don't WANT to pee or poop in the house, but if they are locked inside for 8 hours while their owner is working, sometimes accidents happen. And boy, sometimes they sure do feel guilty about it! Keep cats, however, indoors: This will keep them from hunting and killing what is left of our songbirds. Brush your cats regularly to remove dander and hair to keep it from clogging your furnace or AC units. Consider composting dog waste! Yep, that's how our parents and grandparents used to do it – they buried it in the yard. Before single-use plastic bags became main stream, no one would have thought to bag up and throw away poo. Want to learn more? Here's a great read about composting your dog's waste: theconversation.com/dont-waste-your-dogs-poo-compost-it-107603 Consider having less pets, one pet is better than 2, or 3 or more! Spay & Neuter your pets! This cuts down on unwanted pets. Consider Natural Pets: By natural pets, we are referring to outdoor wildlife such as the birds and butterflies who visit our landscapes. Read the book Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy, who talks about how we can nurture and take care of our natural pets by planting native plants in our landscapes. Native plants will attract lots more birds so that you can have some garden friends every time you're outside or look out the window. What a nice thought! Stop buying cheap toys for dogs and cats to destroy: Consider the simple stick. If there is anything dogs love, sticks have to be on the top of most dog's list! Chewing on a stick can can alleviate your dog's tooth pain (if they have any), and keep dogs from chewing on other things (like patio furniture, for example). Sticks also are great for playing fetch! That said, eating sticks can result in some serious harm to your pooch, so make sure they're not chewing them up, causing splinters to get into the mouth or ingested. If you buy toys, try to avoid buying plastic toys or synthetic materials, think: organic dog chews or balls instead of stuffed animals. Please feel free to share these infographics – if we all work to reduce our carbon footprint, we can live more sustainably and relieve some of the pressure on our overtaxed landfills and environment. Less is More. . . . Infographic Design As an Infographic Designer, I work with clients to design and illustrate visual graphics to quickly communicate ideas and information. View more of my Infographic Design Examples »