Running your own web design business can present many challenges. However, there are many great resources out there which can help you save time and make your business run smoother. The following is a list of 4 resources that can help your web design business run smoother:

1. Freshbooks - FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional. With Freshbooks you can create estimates, invoices, track time and can even be used to accept online payments. Freshbooks can be customized to have the look and feel of your web site. Easily the best invoicing service out there. And there prices are cheap too.
2. Echosign - Echosign allows you to receive digital signatures of documents. As a designer you most likely use contracts with you work. Traditionally contracts are written up, sent to a client for signature, and returned to you. The turnaround time on this could be weeks. Echosign allows you to send a digital document and receive a digital signature from your clients. It notifies you when the client has signed the contract and even sends you a signed copy for your records.
3. PSD2HTML- PSD2HTML provides fast high-quality conversion of design mock ups into clean valid HTML. As a designer you know one of the most time consuming parts of the design process is the coding. PSD2HTML can code your design in as little as 8 hours. They accept source files in all common formats (PSD, PNG, AI etc.). A great time saver if you are in a crunch.
4. Hourly Rate Calculator - The folks over at FreelanceSwitch have developed a hourly rate calculator.  They have developed this hourly rate calculator to give you a guide based on your costs, number of billable hours and desired profit. It is a simple tool for you to play with.  This is a great way to determine how much to charge in order to make a living as a freelance designer.

Hope you enjoy!

With the web evolving to the next level, many more tools have become available. Many of these tools are relatively easy to install but will set your site apart from those alike. Here are 3 techniques which we use and we feel will help you elevate your sites:

1. CSS Dropshadows - 1976Design has developed a way to apply css dropshadows to block elements. This is most commonly used for images but can be used for any block element. This effect requires no background images and will give your images a three dimensional look and feel. It’s really the small subtleties that make the difference. CSS Dropshadows

2. Lightbox - Lightbox is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It’s a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers. It was developed by Lokesh Dhakar as to display images in an overlayed window using visual effects. It is very simple to install and looks extremely professional. There are variations of Lightbox out there which even allow you to open web pages in the overlayed window. Lightbox

3. Fancy Forms - Forms, although although somewhat rudimentary, can be tweaked to give the user a more enjoyable experience. One thing you can do is change the properties of the input boxes currently selected such as border color, background color, and font color. This article by Senthil Karuppaiah gives an easy explanation of how to change these properies using javascript. Subtle things like this will set your web site apart from the rest. Fancy Forms

Stay tuned for more techniques.

I recently attended the “An Event Apart” web design conference in Seattle and came back with some inspirational quotes from some industry leaders including Eric Meyer, Jefferey Zeldman, and Jeff Veen. If you are a web designer and don’t know who these people are, you should. They have made huge contributions to the web design world and constantly strive for standards. Here are three memorable quotes that give me inspiration when working on a design project. Hopefully they will inspire you.

“Writing for the web is important, it is an oportunity to establish our brand and help create a positive user experience”. - Jefferey Zeldman

One of the biggest mistakes we can make as a designer is not to take into account the copy, or writing and text, that is used in our websites. The wordage that we use on our sites can be just as important, if not more important, than the design itself. Take for example Flickr. A minimalist, simple design with large personable wordage that really connects to a user. There are dozens of photo sites up there, but more people choose to use Flickr.

“By zeroing out syles, you can get a more consistent design. Your force yourself to set styles”. -Eric Meyer

Meyer is referring to the practice of resetting your styles at the beginning of a design project. Most people do this by including a style sheet called “reset.css” which set’s many values to 0 (e.g. margin: 0; padding: 0;). A CSS reset is a way to start from scratch. Keep in mind that all CSS attributes, even though they are not in your style sheet, are in fact styled. By resetting them you get a clean slate and can give you peace of mind when styling your site. Check out Eric Meyers page on the CSS reset for more details and good practice.

“We have the power to make people enjoy life”. - Andy Budd

As web designers we can have an impact in a persons happiness. People choose to use the internet for a variety of reasons, but mostly to get enjoyment. By designing sites in a way that engages the user, we can bring enjoyment to their experience and keep them coming back. You can see this happening in the Web 2.0 era through design and utilizing newer technologies such as blogs and ajax which make sites more interactive and engaging. By using these techniques and technologies you can take your site to the next level.

Check back soon for 3 more inspirational quotes.