Your search for a software development company must diligently focus on the necessities and ignore the non-essentials. Once identified, you will need to draw up a legal contract with the company that exhaustively defines the nature of your working relationship with the company and the duties and responsibilities assigned to the said company. This is a process that requires attention to detail and a prime focus on mitigating any and every risk associated with working with a software development company and the process of software development in general.

Here are 4 ways of ensuring that the risks to software development are mitigated considerably.

Understand the Contract and then Sign on the Dotted Line

Typically, you will be presented with either a Fixed –Price or a Time and Material Contract. In the former, the risk related to cost overruns is assumed by the developer while in the latter, you are burdened with it. At first glance, you might think that there is no doubt that you must choose the ‘Fixed Price’ contract. But think about it for a second. Developers aren’t fools; they will ensure that they will take into consideration the prospect of cost overruns, while determining the fixed cost of the project development.  You are paying for it, but you just don’t realize it.  When it comes to a Time and Materials contract, you are going to pay the developer on an hourly basis, so there is a case where the developer might feel it’s worth his while to extend the period of the development to bill some more hours to you.

The bottom line is that both contracts have some risks linked to them. You will need to ensure that you are able to read between the lines of the contract and ensure that each and every deliverable related to the project, is stated explicitly. Otherwise, you are leaving space wide open for potential disputes.

Tweaking Advance Payments

Most software companies will ask for an upfront payment. This could be half of the total cost of the project, if it’s a major investment on the part of the client, or it could even by a full payment if the size and scope of the project is not really that big. But, the problem with such advance payments is that you are bearing the risk of the non-performance of the developer. This is a huge risk and you will need to mitigate it. This can be done by trying to work out a payment deal with the developer that has you making a payment that is time bound. This means you will pay for a week’s worth of development; once the week is out you can take a look at the work done, and then move forward for the next week’s payments.  When you are making advance payments, your focus should only be on minimizing the amount that you pay as much as possible.

Beware of Kill Switches

Oops!  If you forget about this risk, your software is in danger. One of the reasons why experts ask for due diligence before you choose any software developer to work on your project is because there are plenty of crooked developers out there. These are the kind of developers that won’t think twice about working a kill switch into the application that they are developing for you. In some circles, this switch is also known as an extortion switch. In the event there is a payment dispute between you and the unscrupulous developer you are working with, all they will do is press the switch and shut your application down, remotely. Do what you will, but you will have no other option but to pay up. One of the ways that you can get around this blackmail is that you have a contract that categorically makes mention of such practices and prohibits their use.

Beware of the Disappearing Act

The internet has paved the way for plenty of “enterprising” elements who are out to make a quick buck and fool gullible people who think something that’s said on the internet must and will be the absolute truth. There are plenty of people who call themselves freelance developers, playing the field on the World Wide Web. Their modus operandi is simplicity itself. They have a wonderful looking website, a fantastic portfolio, and they respond immediately to quote requests from potential clients. These quotes are often bottom of the barrel that anybody will find attractive. They ask for a limited upfront payment, which is also something that attracts potential clients. When the payments are made, there is no word from the developer. The developer and your money will have disappeared.

It’s very easy to avoid falling into such a trap. The first step is to choose a developer or a development company, that has a physical address and the second step, will be to visit that address and have a face- to-face conversation. At the cost of sounding repetitive, I want to say once again that the key is due diligence. Only work with a company or a freelance developer if you are absolutely sure about their credibility and reputation on the market.

There are plenty of other ways that help ensure, you minimize the risk associated with software development. But, these are enough to push you in the right direction. The important thing is to take all your decisions after a lot of forethought and by evaluating and analyzing everything that you think will go wrong.

The choice of the base color of any website is dependent on the purpose of the website. At times, the choice of the color might not entirely be in your hands, as a designer; the colors used in the web design might be dependent on the existing marketing collaterals of the company and also its logo. There are a number of clients who prefer choosing their colors for the design of their website; and rightly or wrongly, you will have to go along with it.

But, even if you have to go along with the color choice of the website owners, you can still ensure that you choose a color scheme that fits the needs and requirements of the website and its purpose. The standard color schemes that you can choose to use include, monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic and double complementary.

Let’s take a look at each of these schemes in terms of their use in web design.

Monochromatic Color Scheme

A monochromatic color scheme involves the use of just one single base color in the various pages of the site. Of course, designers are able to use the various tints and shade of that color. You can choose to use different monochromatic color schemes for different pages of the site. There are some designers who take this route through the intuitive use of RGBA transparency. More importantly, you can choose to use a monochromatic design for one page, while in another you can go for analogous design. The use of multiple color schemes improves the visual appeal of your site and helps make it more engaging.

Analogous Color Scheme

You have a color wheel and there are colors adjacent to each other on that wheel. If you use colors lying adjacent to each other on that color wheel, you will be using the analogous color scheme. The idea is to use a large slice of the colors on the wheel and make them a part of the website’s design. The correct use of the analogous color scheme deepens the symbolism of the site and brings it out in all its glory.

Complementary Color Scheme

Choosing colors that are placed opposite each other in the color wheel, means you have chosen to go for a complementary color scheme. It gives rise to a unique combination of colors that if used wisely, will provide an interesting look and a solid foundation for the website design.  This doesn’t mean that such a color scheme must be bold; designers can tone it down so that the colors look more natural. Astute website designers couple complementary color schemes with artistic texture in order to create better visual impact.

Split Complementary, triadic and double complementary Color Schemes

As the names of these color schemes rightly suggests, these are just variations of the complementary scheme. If you want to use split complementary color scheme, you will need to choose two colors that lie adjacent to the complement of your chosen base color.  If you are after a triadic color scheme, it involves you choosing colors that are equally placed on the color wheel. This can easily be achieved if you choose colors that are placed one notch more on each side, with respect to the split complement.

Double complementary color scheme is just combining one complementary scheme with another one.

These are the standard color schemes and there are variants of the standard schemes that designers can also use. But, most designers are perfectly happy with the use of standards color schemes, as they make for a more focused approach towards website designing.

Designers would love it if they had to design a brand purely in the aesthetic sense and not the commercial sense. But, the problem is that we are not living in a “perfect world”, and all brands are created with a certain purpose in mind. The very nature of the brand makes it an entity that is driven by pure commercialism. The brand needs to conform to the objectives of the company and if it doesn’t then it is deemed to be unsuccessful. Today, brands are a crucial part of the marketing mix of companies and empower their efforts to gain wider acceptance amongst their target audience. One could define branding as a place where both the marketing considerations of the company and its graphic design meet.

The application of design principles to branding efforts is one of the ways that designers are able to build a high performance brand right from scratch. There are various tools and designing concepts that can be used to ensure that the awareness of the brand, its recall and its impression are of a very high caliber and improve the businesses reach by a very long way.

Impressive looking logo is crucial

Your brand needs a logo. A brand without a logo is like a fish out of water. Look at the most successful businesses out there, behind each successful business is a successful logo. Usually, the logo design should begin right when the company name is being designed; this means when the seeds of the business/organization/ company are first sown, work should begin on the logo. A logo should exude confidence and must look balanced. It must be the perfect visual representation of the company, nothing more and definitely, nothing less.

Typography Consistency

An often ignored, but an equally important part of branding is consistent typography. Designers must be careful with respect to the selection of the font size and style. It’s of paramount importance that the selection of the typography must be such that it can be used across all mediums and related marketing collaterals. A complete branding experience is a product of diligent efforts and an important determinant of this diligence is typographical consistency.

Selection and Definition of Colors

You not only need to choose the right colors, but you also need to define them in the appropriate manner. Careful palette selection and the subsequent definition of the color will ensure that there are a number of suitable color options to choose from, for the brand across various media.

Branding

Finally when the aesthetics are complete, the brand needs to be introduced to the real world by using it in various marketing collaterals. The brand needs to be successfully applied to business cards, web design, company brochures etc. The success or failure of the brand can only be determined when it is applied to specific marketing collaterals.

Universal web design is the kind of design that meets the needs and requirements of the widest possible audience. The principles of website designing that help give shape to universal web design include:
 

• Ensuring that it can be used by people with diverse abilities.
   
• Its needs to be able to accommodate a varied amount of individual preferences.
   
• The focus must be on simplicity and intuitiveness.
   
• It must be able to deliver pertinent information in a highly effective manner.
   
• It must tolerate a certain amount of error.
   
• It must require very little physical or mental effort on the part of the user to understand it and optimize its use.
   
• The design should be able to meet all contextual requirements of the user.

But sometimes even the best intentioned website designers can ignore the key aspects that can make or break universal website design. These are the kind of mistakes that should never be made as website visitors won’t be able to ignore them.

Let’s take a look at some of these mistakes.

Problem with Readability

If the textual content is not easily readable, the effectiveness of the website’s design goes down a few notches. This means that website visitors will have to strain themselves in order to read the content, which goes against the principles of universal website design. Some of the mistakes that make the content difficult to read include, small text size, using inappropriate font style, and improper color contrast. Other problems that can equally affect readability of text include are not focusing on user friendly headings and not giving enough importance to ample line or paragraph spacing.

Unconventional Looking Text Links

When it comes to text links, going by convention is the key. Otherwise, website visitors will find it difficult to determine a text link. The long standing convention in web browsing is that a hyperlinked text must have an underline. There are some smart designers who think it’s a good idea to not adhere to this convention and try and define a link a little differently, by highlighting it with a marked color contrast or using a darker color from the surrounding text. But, the whole idea behind underling a hyperlink is to help website visitors easily distinguish it. It’s a familiar differentiating factor that website visitors have come to expect and if they don’t find such links, they are going to be confused. A website design that confuses a visitor can never be considered universal.

A lot of visual noise

Have you heard a noise that doesn’t make a sound? No, this isn’t a joke, there is something called a visual noise that makes a website unappealing, unusable and inaccessible. If the website design looks scattered all over the place, it means that there is a lot of visual noise that is interfering with the website visitor’s ability to make sense of the website design. If the website has no focal point and a complete lack of visual hierarchy, the user will be left scrambling for answers on the website. A website’s design should be a coming together of diverse design elements that make perfect sense. If these design elements appear crammed together in the layout, the design looks disjointed and doesn’t appear to make much sense. The result is the kind of visual noise that we can do well without.

These three mistakes can cost universal web design big time, and a web design company must ensure that it doesn’t commit these cardinal mistakes. If they are avoided, the result is a universal web design; but if they are committed, the result is a non performing web design. The equation is very simple.

What do some of the biggest and successful organizations have in common, apart from the fact that they are big and successful? The answer is that they have a great logo. Look up any popular organization and you will find a distinct and memorable logo behind it.

The logo can very well be considered the face of your business. So it needs to be original, exclusive, interesting and must be the perfect visual representation of all that your business/company/organization/corporate stands for. It must embody the company’s beliefs, values, mission, purpose and objective. It must be able to inspire trust and prompt instant recall. Yes, a logo does all these things, and a whole lot more.

As can be imagined, it’s going to be quite a task to ensure that your logo is able to improve the awareness of your brand amongst your target audience. But, keeping the tips given below in mind, the task can become a little easier.

Simplicity works Best

Some of the best logos are very simple. Take the case of the Apple logo; what could be simpler than an apple with a bite, the bite was given to ensure that people don’t confuse it with some other fruit. Some of the other logos that are as simple as they are recognizable are Nike, Sony, Yahoo, Google, and Dell amongst various others. Simplicity ensures that the logo can be easily recognized, wherever it’s placed. Such logos, because of the inherent simplicity of their design and purpose are able to make an impression that stays long after the people have seen your logo.

It should impress wherever and whenever it is used

Your logo is going to be used across different channels of communication, and must look good anywhere and everywhere. So, you must identify the various places in which your logo might appear such as brochure, websites, banner etc. and while designing a logo, you must ensure that your logo will look good if and when used in the places that you have identified. At times, you might have to decrease size of the logo, and at other times, you might want to enlarge its size by quite a bit. So, the use of fine lines,  choice of graphic format, fonts, color, texture should be such that it makes the right impression whatever its size and whatever the background on which its used.

The keyword is ‘Unique’

Your logo helps generate awareness about your brand and encourages brand recall. This is why it mustn’t resemble any other logo. It is the uniqueness of your logo that will allow it to create its own space in the minds of the audience. You must do everything you can, to ensure that your logo is different and has its own distinct identity. Here, it’s important not to take the easy way out and download those stocks images from the web and use them in your logo. Do not take a chance. You can take inspiration from various sources, but at the end of the day your logo should be your own creation and must be able to stand out from the crowd.

These are just three tips that should help you choose a logo that is memorable and has the longevity to keep impressing people for a long period of time.