How To Convince Clients It’s Time To Redesign Their Websites

One of the joys of being a freelancer is that, if you do your job, you’ll have clients who stay with you year after year. It really is nice to know that people appreciate your hard work and that you have built a trusting relationship.

After awhile, you might start to notice that some of those clients may be in desperate need of a site redesign. No, it’s not that the site you designed is that bad. But, after several years and several advancements in technology, a site may simply become outdated.

Personally, I feel like with each passing year I become better at what I do as both a designer and developer. A site I designed 5-10 years ago usually won’t measure up to the standards I have today.

Image Source: Retro Operator via Shutterstock.

Heck, there are times when I look at something I did one or two years ago and say "Wow, I wish I knew then what I know now. I may have added feature X or used script Y".

So, there are definitely selfish reasons for discussing a redesign. Both in terms of putting your best work out there and, of course, bringing in more revenue. That said, there are also times when outdated websites can have bad consequences for your clients.

Outdated websites leaves your client susceptible to:

• Being bypassed by the competition.


• Wasting precious time and money updating an old static HTML site or one with a clunky CMS from 2001.


• SEO penalties from algorithm Google updates.


• Possible security holes from outdated software or scripts.


• Missing out on social media integration.


• Failing to serve mobile visitors with a device-friendly version of their site.


• Lack of browser compatibility.

What To Do About It

Perhaps the best way to approach your client on the subject of a redesign is to schedule some time to talk in person. You might even go that extra mile and buy them lunch.

When the subject of their website is brought up, tell them that you really believe they could benefit from a new website. List the benefits, including:

• Save money and become more efficient with a new CMS such as WordPress.


• The ability to create a custom template and functionality for mobile devices.


• Take advantage of newer technologies to add new features.


• Social media usage to increase the awareness of their brand.

Of course, the list can go on and on. The idea is to whet their appetite for what they are missing out on. From there, show them examples of some of your recent work. Point out specific features or layouts that you think may truly benefit your client. Explain how your other clients are using new technologies and how it has helped their business.

Keeping Their Budget In Mind

Your client may just be thrilled to hear about the latest and greatest you have to offer. Selling them on your skills is essential. But even more important to your client is how much the project will cost. Convincing them to spend money is always the bigger challenge.

One of the ways I like to present the idea of a redesign is to think of it as an investment in my client’s business. The investment isn’t just about a fancy-looking new site, it’s also about functionality and how it can potentially increase sales and make life easier.

Particularly for clients who spend a good bit of resources updating their site (whether they do it or pay you to do it), it’s a good idea to point out the cost savings of using WordPress, etc. This may not be as relevant to a client who just redesigned their site a couple of years ago. But, if we’re talking about clients who have gone 5+ years without a redesign, the cost savings argument can really convince them to go ahead with the project.

Most everyone you deal with will eventually ask you "How much does this cost?". It may be a good idea to have a rough draft proposal on hand. That way, you can give them a ballpark figure and still give yourself wiggle room depending on what the client wants to do.

In Conclusion

When you have a free moment, take a look at your portfolio. Study some of your older work and pick out a client or two who you feel could really benefit from a redesign. Go over their sites with a fine-toothed comb and figure out what it is they’re missing out on. Then, schedule some time to chat.

If you’ve built a trusting relationship, then they are more likely to really listen and consider your proposal. Be confident in what you say and don’t make promises you know you can’t keep. Just give them your best, most honest pitch. You just may end up with more work than you know what to do with (which could always be the subject of another post). Good luck!

The post How To Convince Clients It’s Time To Redesign Their Websites appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.

Related posts:

1. A Year In Review: 11 Things I Learned From Freelancer to Agency Owner


2. What To Do When Third-Party Services Go Awry


3. Four Design Lessons From Shopping Carts

How To Convince Clients It’s Time To Redesign Their Websites

Display Date and Time: How to Do It Right

We come across them dates and time… well, every day. When it comes to the Web, you can spot them in your mobile apps, in emails, in your messaging apps and many other places. Yet in spite of seeing date and time every day and everywhere, we have yet to adopt a universal format for it.

For example, if I write 10/05/2015, you can never be sure if that "10" is the month or the date unless I tell you where I am from. Sometimes the format changes, other times the language.

It is of importance that as web developers we pay attention to the date and time that we deal with in our projects, so that we can cater them to different geographic inhabitants without any conflict. In this post we’ll be discussing what to avoid and what to embrace when it comes to displaying date-time.

Globalization

Let’s say we don’t want to convert and show different date and time formats to different viewers across the world, what can we do? We pick one global format and stick with it. Here is where some standards come into play. Before we get to that, I must advise that W3C recommends that we use the ISO 8601 date format with UTC timezone.

ISO 8601

ISO 8601 describes an internationally accepted way to represent dates and times using numbers.

And the format for complete date is; YYYY-MM-DD, for example: 2015-07-28

YYYY = 4 digit year
MM = 2 digit month (01=January, etc.)
DD = 2 digit day (01 to 31)

For complete date-time;YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.s, for example: 2015-07-28T21:15:18.45

T = To separate date and time according to ISO 8601
mm = 2 digit minute (00 through 59)
ss = 2 digit second (00 through 59)
s = Decimal fraction of a second, 1 or more digits

Please note that as no timezone has been mentioned in the above example so it is to be assumed that the time is in the local timezone. If you have decided to use UTC timezone, just add Z to the value to denote UTC

For example: 2015-07-28T21:15:18.45Z

But if you wish to display local time, then you can add a timezone offset for UTC to the value in the formats +hh:mm or -hh:mm as needed.

For example: Let us assume 2015-07-28T21:15:18.45 is in the EST (Eastern Standard Time) timezone which lags 5 hours behind UTC timezone.

To represent it with UTC offset we write 2015-07-28T21:15:18.45-05:00 which is equivalent to the UTC time 2015-07-29T02:15:18.45Z.

Again Z is appended to represent that the date-time displayed is in UTC time.

UTC vs. GMT

They both are same yet different. By now you have probably come across GMT at least once; while setting up the date-time in your mobile phone or computer. It is the most popular timezone recognized worldwide since it has been in existence longer than UTC.

While some may say that they both are the same but they are not, UTC is a successor of GMT and is maintained by the International Telecommunications Union. It is advised to refer to time based on UTC and not GMT.

Use The Name Of The Months

The ISO standard only used numbers in the date representation to avoid any language conflicts. But, if the contents of your web application is going to be in English, then you should consider writing down months in English rather than in numbers.

Instead of 2015-07-28, 28, July, 2015 is easier to understand by many, and less confusing.

Localization

There are times when we want to be very specific with our services and would like to represent the date and time in local timezones and languages. There are many libraries and APIs available for web developers to make use of and display the dates and times as per the accessing region.

You can get the browser default locale either by interpreting the Accept-Language request header or through the navigator.language or navigator.browserLanguage JavaScript object, but the best method is to let the user choose a locale in your application since the former ways are not very reliable.

Once you have the locale, you can format the date time according to it, for example using the Internationalization API, you can format a date using toLocaleDateString in JavaScript, for instance, myDate.toLocaleDateString("ko-KR") will return a formatted date in the format used in Korea by Korean-speaking natives.

Daylight Savings Time (DST)

In certain countries daylight savings time is done by forwarding the clocks by an hour in summer to make use of the extra sunlight available. Be aware of DST to keep up with the local times in your services.

Please take note that there is no daylight savings in the UTC timezone.

No Two-Digit Year

While customizing the date and time for localization do not use the two-digit format for the year at any point. We are already in the 21st century. Using years like 64, 99 etc. will be troublesome in future. If you already have a two-digit year system in place consider changing it.

Leap Year And Other Calendars

Let us end this post with some miscellaneous things to remember while dealing with dates. If you are not using any library or API for dates and like to deal with them on your own (which is not recommended nonetheless), do not forget to show the 29th of February in the input for the leap years.

Also, it is worth noting that the Gregorian calendar is not the only form of calendar available and used all over the world. There are few regional calendars that the locals follow, especially when it comes to festivities.

References

• International Telecommunications Union: Status of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) study in ITU-R


• ISO: ISO 8601 – Date and time format


• Wikipedia: Coordinated Universal Time


• Wikipedia: Daylight Saving Time


• Wikipedia: Greenwich Mean Time


• W3C Note: Date and Time Formats


• W3C Tips: Use international date format (ISO)

Display Date and Time: How to Do It Right

Display Time and Web: How to Do It Right

We come across them dates and time… well, every day. When it comes to the Web, you can spot them in your mobile apps, in emails, in your messaging apps and many other places. Yet in spite of seeing date and time every day and everywhere, we have yet to adopt a universal format for it.

For example, if I write 10/05/2015, you can never be sure if that "10" is the month or the date unless I tell you where I am from. Sometimes the format changes, other times the language.

It is of importance that as web developers we pay attention to the date and time that we deal with in our projects, so that we can cater them to different geographic inhabitants without any conflict. In this post we’ll be discussing what to avoid and what to embrace when it comes to displaying date-time.

Globalization

Let’s say we don’t want to convert and show different date and time formats to different viewers across the world, what can we do? We pick one global format and stick with it. Here is where some standards come into play. Before we get to that, I must advise that W3C recommends that we use the ISO 8601 date format with UTC timezone.

ISO 8601

ISO 8601 describes an internationally accepted way to represent dates and times using numbers.

And the format for complete date is; YYYY-MM-DD, for example: 2015-07-28

YYYY = 4 digit year
MM = 2 digit month (01=January, etc.)
DD = 2 digit day (01 to 31)

For complete date-time;YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.s, for example: 2015-07-28T21:15:18.45

T = To separate date and time according to ISO 8601
mm = 2 digit minute (00 through 59)
ss = 2 digit second (00 through 59)
s = Decimal fraction of a second, 1 or more digits

Please note that as no timezone has been mentioned in the above example so it is to be assumed that the time is in the local timezone. If you have decided to use UTC timezone, just add Z to the value to denote UTC

For example: 2015-07-28T21:15:18.45Z

But if you wish to display local time, then you can add a timezone offset for UTC to the value in the formats +hh:mm or -hh:mm as needed.

For example: Let us assume 2015-07-28T21:15:18.45 is in the EST (Eastern Standard Time) timezone which lags 5 hours behind UTC timezone.

To represent it with UTC offset we write 2015-07-28T21:15:18.45-05:00 which is equivalent to the UTC time 2015-07-29T02:15:18.45Z.

Again Z is appended to represent that the date-time displayed is in UTC time.

UTC vs. GMT

They both are same yet different. By now you have probably come across GMT at least once; while setting up the date-time in your mobile phone or computer. It is the most popular timezone recognized worldwide since it has been in existence longer than UTC.

While some may say that they both are the same but they are not, UTC is a successor of GMT and is maintained by the International Telecommunications Union. It is advised to refer to time based on UTC and not GMT.

Use The Name Of The Months

The ISO standard only used numbers in the date representation to avoid any language conflicts. But, if the contents of your web application is going to be in English, then you should consider writing down months in English rather than in numbers.

Instead of 2015-07-28, 28, July, 2015 is easier to understand by many, and less confusing.

Localization

There are times when we want to be very specific with our services and would like to represent the date and time in local timezones and languages. There are many libraries and APIs available for web developers to make use of and display the dates and times as per the accessing region.

You can get the browser default locale either by interpreting the Accept-Language request header or through the navigator.language or navigator.browserLanguage JavaScript object, but the best method is to let the user choose a locale in your application since the former ways are not very reliable.

Once you have the locale, you can format the date time according to it, for example using the Internationalization API, you can format a date using toLocaleDateString in JavaScript, for instance, myDate.toLocaleDateString("ko-KR") will return a formatted date in the format used in Korea by Korean-speaking natives.

Daylight Savings Time (DST)

In certain countries daylight savings time is done by forwarding the clocks by an hour in summer to make use of the extra sunlight available. Be aware of DST to keep up with the local times in your services.

Please take note that there is no daylight savings in the UTC timezone.

No Two-Digit Year

While customizing the date and time for localization do not use the two-digit format for the year at any point. We are already in the 21st century. Using years like 64, 99 etc. will be troublesome in future. If you already have a two-digit year system in place consider changing it.

Leap Year And Other Calendars

Let us end this post with some miscellaneous things to remember while dealing with dates. If you are not using any library or API for dates and like to deal with them on your own (which is not recommended nonetheless), do not forget to show the 29th of February in the input for the leap years.

Also, it is worth noting that the Gregorian calendar is not the only form of calendar available and used all over the world. There are few regional calendars that the locals follow, especially when it comes to festivities.

References

• International Telecommunications Union: Status of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) study in ITU-R


• ISO: ISO 8601 – Date and time format


• Wikipedia: Coordinated Universal Time


• Wikipedia: Daylight Saving Time


• Wikipedia: Greenwich Mean Time


• W3C Note: Date and Time Formats


• W3C Tips: Use international date format (ISO)

Display Time and Web: How to Do It Right

Could More Vacation Time Improve Your Productivity? [30 Countries Compared]

Japan, known for its workaholic culture made headlines when its government was reported to be considering passing a law which force its workers to take leave. There are many reasons that contribute to such a drastic decision including the thought that this move could help to revive Japan’s economic growth after years of stagnation.

But is it really that simple? Do more leave days equate to increased productivity?

While there are many articles written on the Internet (including one of our very own) that say YES, fewer work days lead to higher productivity, the data is incomplete or usually uses only one country as a focal point. We thought we’d give the data a second look, and going much bigger with this.

So here’s what We Did

You may have come across reports that mention Switzerland as the most productive country, based on a Global Competitiveness Report. We’ve looked into the methodology and found that they fall back on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) as "an appropriate estimate of the level of productivity and competitiveness of an economy."

Technically, the higher up a country is ranked on this report, the higher the productivity of the country.

So we pulled the top 30 most competitive countries as ranked by the Global Competitiveness Report 2014/2015 and found the four following sets of data for comparison:

• average working hours per week


• minimum annual leave mandated by law


• days of parental leave allocated for each country


• parental leave mandated by law

Note: The data here is correct as pulled from their sources on Feb, 2015. Our sources are available at the bottom of the table.

Working Hours And Leave By Countries

Country	Working hrs per Week	Minimum Mandated Annual Leave (days)	Paid Public Holidays	Paid Vacation Days	Parental leave
(1) Switzerland	30 hrs*	20 days	N/A	20 days	14 weeks
(2) Singapore	40 hrs	8-14 days	11 days	7 days	16 weeks
(3) United States	34 hrs*	0 days; 6-20 days (doe)	0 days	0 days	0 days
(4) Finland	32 hrs*	30 days	9 days	25 days	15 weeks
(5) Germany	27 hrs*	24 days	10-14 days (depending on state)	20 days	14 weeks
(6) Japan	33 hrs*	10 days; +1 day off for each yos (max: 20 days)	N/A	10 days	14 weeks
(7) Hong Kong	40 hrs	7-14 days (depending yos)	N/A	7 days	10 weeks
(8) Netherlands	27 hrs*	20 days	10 days	20 days	16 weeks
(9) United Kingdom	32 hrs*	28 days	8 days (9 for Scotland)	28 days	39 weeks
(10) Sweden	31 hrs*	25 days	N/A	25 days	480 days
(11) Norway	27 hrs*	25 days	2 days	21 days	56 or 46 weeks
(12) United Arab Emirates	40 hrs	2 days/month for 1st year; 30 days for > 1 yos	10 days	25 days	45 days
(13) Denmark	27 hrs*	30 days	9 days	25 days	52 weeks
(14) Taiwan	40 hrs	7-30 days (dependent on yos)	25 days	7 days	8 weeks
(15) Canada	33 hrs*	10 days	5-10 days (depending on province)	10 days	50 weeks
(16) Qatar	40 hrs	15-20 days	10 days	15 days	50 days
(17) New Zealand	34 hrs*	20 days	11 days	20 days	14 weeks
(18) Belgium	30 hrs*	20-24 days (dependent on working days a week)	10 days	20 days	15 weeks
(19) Luxembourg	32 hrs*	25 days (extra 6 days of for workers with disabilities)	10 days	25 days	16 weeks
(20) Malaysia	40 hrs	8-16 days (depending on yos)	19 days	7 days	60 days
(21) Austria	31 hrs*	30-36 days (dependent on yos)	13 days	30/35 days	16 weeks
(22) Australia	32 hrs*	20 days (25 days for shiftworkers)	9-11 days	20 days	18 weeks
(23) France	29 hrs*	30 days (extra 22 days for > 35 working hrs/week)	1 day	25 days	16 weeks; 26 weeks for third child.
(24) Saudi Arabia	48 hrs	21-30 days (dependent on yos)	10 days	15 days	10 weeks
(25) Ireland	35 hrs*	20 days	9 days	20 days	26 weeks
(26) South Korea	42 hrs*	15-25 days (dependent on yos)	N/A	15 days	90 days
(27) Israel	36 hrs*	10-28 days (dependent on yos)	N/A	10 days	14 weeks
(28) China	44 hrs	5-15 days (dependent on yos)	11 days	5 days	98 days
(29) Estonia	36 hrs*	28 days (dependent on contract)	N/A	20 days	140 days (extra 2 wks for medical complications)
(30) Iceland	33 hrs*	24 days	12 days	24 days	90 days

*doe – depending on employer;

*yos – year of service

Sources:

1. Top 30 Most Competitive Countries, Global Competitive Report


2. List of statutory minimum employment leave by country, Wikipedia


3. *Average annual hrs actually worked per worker, OECD


4. Workweek and weekend, Wikipedia


5. Parental leave, Wikipedia

Leaderboard

Now, we understand that the table above is contains a truckload of data and who has the vacation time to go through the data cell by cell, right? In this section we will just give you the summary for each category, in what we will call the leaderboards.

Let’s start with the working hours in a week.

Countries with the most working hours:

• 48 hrs – Saudi Arabia


• 44 hrs – China


• 42 hrs – South Korea


• 40 hrs – Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates,


• 36 hrs – Israel, Estonia

Countries with the Least working hours:

• 27 hrs – Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark


• 29 hrs – France


• 30 hrs – Switzerland, Belgium


• 31 hrs – Sweden, Austria


• 32 hrs – Luxembourg, Australia

If you are looking for the country that tops the chart in highest number of mandated annual leave, check this out:

Countries With Most Annual Leave (days):

• 30 days – Finland, France, Denmark, Austria


• 28 days – United Kingdom, Estonia


• 24 days – Germany, Iceland


• 25 days – Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg


• 21 days – Saudi Arabia

Countries With Least Annual Leave (days):

• 0 days – United States


• 5 days – China


• 7 days – Taiwan, Hong Kong


• 8 days – Singapore, Malaysia


• 10 days – Israel, Canada, Japan

If you wonder if vacation days actually have the influence on productivity in the workplace, then these are the leaderboards you want to see.

Countries With The Most Paid Vacation Days:

• 30 days – Austria


• 28 days – United Kingdom


• 25 days – Finland, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Luxembourg, France


• 24 days – Iceland


• 21 days – Norway

Countries With The Least Paid Vacation Days:

• 0 days – United States


• 5 days – China


• 7 days – Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia


• 10 days – Japan, Canada, Israel
  


• 15 days – Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea

Parental leave, a controversial topic for many countries including the United States. Here are the countries that give parents a whole lot of time off, and those that didn’t.

Countries With The Longest Parental Leave:

• 480 days – Sweden


• 56 weeks – Norway


• 52 weeks – Denmark


• 50 weeks – Canada


• 26 weeks – Ireland

Countries With The Shortest Parental Leave:

• 45 days – United Arab Emirates


• 50 days – Qatar


• 8 weeks – Taiwan


• 60 days – Malaysia


• 10 weeks – Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia

Lastly, here are the leaderboards on paid public holidays, also known as holidays that you get to take a break while still on a payroll.

Countries With The Most Paid Public Holidays:

• 25 days – Taiwan


• 19 days – Malaysia


• 13 days – Austria


• 12 days – Iceland


• 11 days – Singapore

Countries With The Least Paid Public Holidays:

• 0 days – United States


• 1 day – France


• 2 days – Norway


• 5 days – Canada


• 8 days – United Kingdom

Visual Aid

To our readers who adopt the tl;dr approach, here’s an infographic that can help you better visualize the amount of data featured here, designed by our friends in Piktochart.

Editor’s note: This infographic is available at Piktochart and is free to use.

Conclusion

While our methods are far from scientific, we’re not seeing a pattern where more vacation days is contributing to higher productivity or competitiveness of a particular country. Then again, the data is all here and up for your scrutiny and interpretation.

Let us know what you think.

Could More Vacation Time Improve Your Productivity? [30 Countries Compared]

Could More Vacation Time Improve Your Productivity? [30 Countries Compared]

Japan, known for its workaholic culture made headlines when its government was reported to be considering passing a law which force its workers to take leave. There are many reasons that contribute to such a drastic decision including the thought that this move could help to revive Japan’s economic growth after years of stagnation.

But is it really that simple? Do more leave days equate to increased productivity?

While there are many articles written on the Internet (including one of our very own) that say YES, fewer work days lead to higher productivity, the data is incomplete or usually uses only one country as a focal point. We thought we’d give the data a second look, and going much bigger with this.

So here’s what We Did

You may have come across reports that mention Switzerland as the most productive country, based on a Global Competitiveness Report. We’ve looked into the methodology and found that they fall back on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) as "an appropriate estimate of the level of productivity and competitiveness of an economy."

Technically, the higher up a country is ranked on this report, the higher the productivity of the country.

So we pulled the top 30 most competitive countries as ranked by the Global Competitiveness Report 2014/2015 and found the four following sets of data for comparison:

• average working hours per week


• minimum annual leave mandated by law


• days of parental leave allocated for each country


• parental leave mandated by law

Note: The data here is correct as pulled from their sources on Feb, 2015. Our sources are available at the bottom of the table.

Working Hours And Leave By Countries

Country	Working hrs per Week	Minimum Mandated Annual Leave (days)	Paid Public Holidays	Paid Vacation Days	Parental leave
(1) Switzerland	30 hrs*	20 days	N/A	20 days	14 weeks
(2) Singapore	40 hrs	8-14 days	11 days	7 days	16 weeks
(3) United States	34 hrs*	0 days; 6-20 days (doe)	0 days	0 days	0 days
(4) Finland	32 hrs*	30 days	9 days	25 days	15 weeks
(5) Germany	27 hrs*	24 days	10-14 days (depending on state)	20 days	14 weeks
(6) Japan	33 hrs*	10 days; +1 day off for each yos (max: 20 days)	N/A	10 days	14 weeks
(7) Hong Kong	40 hrs	7-14 days (depending yos)	N/A	7 days	10 weeks
(8) Netherlands	27 hrs*	20 days	10 days	20 days	16 weeks
(9) United Kingdom	32 hrs*	28 days	8 days (9 for Scotland)	28 days	39 weeks
(10) Sweden	31 hrs*	25 days	N/A	25 days	480 days
(11) Norway	27 hrs*	25 days	2 days	21 days	56 or 46 weeks
(12) United Arab Emirates	40 hrs	2 days/month for 1st year; 30 days for > 1 yos	10 days	25 days	45 days
(13) Denmark	27 hrs*	30 days	9 days	25 days	52 weeks
(14) Taiwan	40 hrs	7-30 days (dependent on yos)	25 days	7 days	8 weeks
(15) Canada	33 hrs*	10 days	5-10 days (depending on province)	10 days	50 weeks
(16) Qatar	40 hrs	15-20 days	10 days	15 days	50 days
(17) New Zealand	34 hrs*	20 days	11 days	20 days	14 weeks
(18) Belgium	30 hrs*	20-24 days (dependent on working days a week)	10 days	20 days	15 weeks
(19) Luxembourg	32 hrs*	25 days (extra 6 days of for workers with disabilities)	10 days	25 days	16 weeks
(20) Malaysia	40 hrs	8-16 days (depending on yos)	19 days	7 days	60 days
(21) Austria	31 hrs*	30-36 days (dependent on yos)	13 days	30/35 days	16 weeks
(22) Australia	32 hrs*	20 days (25 days for shiftworkers)	9-11 days	20 days	18 weeks
(23) France	29 hrs*	30 days (extra 22 days for > 35 working hrs/week)	1 day	25 days	16 weeks; 26 weeks for third child.
(24) Saudi Arabia	48 hrs	21-30 days (dependent on yos)	10 days	15 days	10 weeks
(25) Ireland	35 hrs*	20 days	9 days	20 days	26 weeks
(26) South Korea	42 hrs*	15-25 days (dependent on yos)	N/A	15 days	90 days
(27) Israel	36 hrs*	10-28 days (dependent on yos)	N/A	10 days	14 weeks
(28) China	44 hrs	5-15 days (dependent on yos)	11 days	5 days	98 days
(29) Estonia	36 hrs*	28 days (dependent on contract)	N/A	20 days	140 days (extra 2 wks for medical complications)
(30) Iceland	33 hrs*	24 days	12 days	24 days	90 days

*doe – depending on employer;
*yos – year of service

Sources:

1. Top 30 Most Competitive Countries, Global Competitive Report


2. List of statutory minimum employment leave by country, Wikipedia


3. *Average annual hrs actually worked per worker, OECD


4. Workweek and weekend, Wikipedia


5. Parental leave, Wikipedia

Leaderboard

Now, we understand that the table above is contains a truckload of data and who has the vacation time to go through the data cell by cell, right? In this section we will just give you the summary for each category, in what we will call the leaderboards.

Let’s start with the working hours in a week.

Countries with the most working hours:

• 48 hrs – Saudi Arabia


• 44 hrs – China


• 42 hrs – South Korea


• 40 hrs – Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates,


• 36 hrs – Israel, Estonia

Countries with the Least working hours:

• 27 hrs – Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark


• 29 hrs – France


• 30 hrs – Switzerland, Belgium


• 31 hrs – Sweden, Austria


• 32 hrs – Luxembourg, Australia

If you are looking for the country that tops the chart in highest number of mandated annual leave, check this out:

Countries With Most Annual Leave (days):

• 30 days – Finland, France, Denmark, Austria


• 28 days – United Kingdom, Estonia


• 24 days – Germany, Iceland


• 25 days – Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg


• 21 days – Saudi Arabia

Countries With Least Annual Leave (days):

• 0 days – United States


• 5 days – China


• 7 days – Taiwan, Hong Kong


• 8 days – Singapore, Malaysia


• 10 days – Israel, Canada, Japan

If you wonder if vacation days actually have the influence on productivity in the workplace, then these are the leaderboards you want to see.

Countries With The Most Paid Vacation Days:

• 30 days – Austria


• 28 days – United Kingdom


• 25 days – Finland, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Luxembourg, France


• 24 days – Iceland


• 21 days – Norway

Countries With The Least Paid Vacation Days:

• 0 days – United States


• 5 days – China


• 7 days – Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia


• 10 days – Japan, Canada, Israel


• 15 days – Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea

Parental leave, a controversial topic for many countries including the United States. Here are the countries that give parents a whole lot of time off, and those that didn’t.

Countries With The Longest Parental Leave:

• 480 days – Sweden


• 56 weeks – Norway


• 52 weeks – Denmark


• 50 weeks – Canada


• 26 weeks – Ireland

Countries With The Shortest Parental Leave:

• 45 days – United Arab Emirates


• 50 days – Qatar


• 8 weeks – Taiwan


• 60 days – Malaysia


• 10 weeks – Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia

Lastly, here are the leaderboards on paid public holidays, also known as holidays that you get to take a break while still on a payroll.

Countries With The Most Paid Public Holidays:

• 25 days – Taiwan


• 19 days – Malaysia


• 13 days – Austria


• 12 days – Iceland


• 11 days – Singapore

Countries With The Least Paid Public Holidays:

• 0 days – United States


• 1 day – France


• 2 days – Norway


• 5 days – Canada


• 8 days – United Kingdom

Visual Aid

To our readers who adopt the tl;dr approach, here’s an infographic that can help you better visualize the amount of data featured here, designed by our friends in Piktochart.

Editor’s note: This infographic is available at Piktochart and is free to use.

Conclusion

While our methods are far from scientific, we’re not seeing a pattern where more vacation days is contributing to higher productivity or competitiveness of a particular country. Then again, the data is all here and up for your scrutiny and interpretation.

Let us know what you think.

Could More Vacation Time Improve Your Productivity? [30 Countries Compared]

The Internet’s Most Hated Innovations Of All Time [Infographic]

The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. The modern world is no stranger to major innovations making its mark and ruling the world before being dethroned by the next successor in line. Every year inventors try to top each other, pushing the boundaries of technology and innovativeness to try to cement their names in the history books for posterity.

Then, there are these guys, the creators of some of the most hated innovations every person who has ever used the Internet has had to come across. If you don’t know who Dennis Toeppen or Ethan Zuckerman is, you’re about to find out.

This brief but informative infographic by StudyWeb.com will tell you about 7 of the Internet’s most hated innovations of all time. Let us know if you agree with the list or if you think that they have missed out on any other aggravating creation.

The Internet’s Most Hated Innovations Of All Time [Infographic]

The Internet’s Most Hated Innovations Of All Time [Infographic]

The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. The modern world is no stranger to major innovations making its mark and ruling the world before being dethroned by the next successor in line. Every year inventors try to top each other, pushing the boundaries of technology and innovativeness to try to cement their names in the history books for posterity.

Then, there are these guys, the creators of some of the most hated innovations every person who has ever used the Internet has had to come across. If you don’t know who Dennis Toeppen or Ethan Zuckerman is, you’re about to find out.

This brief but informative infographic by StudyWeb.com will tell you about 7 of the Internet’s most hated innovations of all time. Let us know if you agree with the list or if you think that they have missed out on any other aggravating creation.

The Internet’s Most Hated Innovations Of All Time [Infographic]

Is It Time to Quit That Failing Creative Idea?

We’ve all made excuses for why we haven’t gotten started on something we really want to do. We’re too busy, or we haven’t prepared enough to get started. The truth is, there are a million excuses we all can use to avoid making the necessary choices and sacrifices we need to in order to truly succeed. However, sometimes those excuses are actually legitimate.

Sometimes we really do need to figure things out first before we acquire our first clients. Sometimes we really ought to quit working on an idea that’s clearly going to be a failure. The trouble is knowing whether our excuse is actually legitimate, or whether we’re just stalling. We’re going to explore some of the ways you can tell the difference, and start finishing everything you start.

Thinking It Over

In almost everything we do, there’s a lot to be gained from having a thought process that’s separate from taking action. Putting effort into the planning stage of a project is essential to ensuring that it will be a success. Just like you probably wouldn’t just walk onto a stage in front of hundreds of people and start talking without having a speech prepared, it’s rarely a good idea to jump into something feet first and hope you swim instead of sink.

Image Source: Use Your Brain via Shutterstock.

Take the time to really evaluate whether you’re ready to take action. Does your idea seem half baked? Is it the best solution you can come up with for the problem you’re trying to solve? If you’re the type to act first and think later, make sure to slow down and visualize the actual end of your project. That’s right – pretend that you’ve already achieved your goal.

What, exactly, does that look like? What deliverables have been created? What is the reaction of your client? If the reality doesn’t match up with the hopeful scenario in your head, it’s time to recalibrate what you’ve been doing and start again.

Taking Action

This is where many of us get choked up. You’ve planned and planned for ages, and you’re sure your project is going to be a smashing success. Yet, for some reason, it’s extremely difficult for you to actually get started. Maybe you’re missing some essential component, or you feel your skills in a certain area aren’t quite up to par. Whatever the excuse, it’s keeping you from actually taking that first step.

Believe it or not, there’s an easy fix to this common problem. It involves setting clear deadlines to action. Even if you haven’t completely thought everything out, it helps to just put something out there and get feedback from others.

Image Source: Take Action via Shutterstock.

If you’re working on a long-term project for a client and you find yourself struggling with making decisions, see if you can communicate with them more regularly and get their input. Or better yet, go find some of your client’s target audience members and ask them what they think of your work so far. Does it resonate with them? Which parts are the most successful?

This kind of “on the job” market testing is a great way to plan your work and take action at the same time. You don’t need to be 100% ready before you release your work to the world for evaluation. Often, the ideas and suggestions you get from showing people what you have will help make your work even better than it would have been otherwise.

It’s better to do something – anything – that’s “good enough,” than it is to do nothing and wait for absolute perfection. You’ll learn more after you begin than you ever will by research and planning alone.

If You Don’t Succeed, Quit?

In a word, yes. Part of being successful is knowing that, many times, you are going to fail. If you want to succeed on a regular basis, you have to develop the foresight to know when to abandon an idea or project that’s not working. The reason might be that you ran into complications that you didn’t plan for, or simply that you’re just not interested in making time to complete the project. It’s just as important to figure out what you actually want to work on as it is to make the decision to work on something.

The last thing you want is for a project you only feel so-so about to simply yield mediocre results, resulting in months or years of work for no big payoff. It’s much better to fail at something quickly – recognizing a failure when you see one. If you’re working on a project and you can’t bring yourself to meet your minimum goals every day (30 minutes of writing, an hour of looking for new clients), perhaps it’s time to admit to yourself that what you thought you wanted to accomplish isn’t really working for you anymore.

Image Source: If you never try you’ll never know! via Shutterstock.

Give yourself a hard deadline and evaluate your progress. If you haven’t taken any firm action within two or three weeks, then it’s important to be honest and ask yourself whether you actually want to finish this work. Sometimes the answer is “no” – and that’s perfectly okay. We all miscalculate our enthusiasm for an idea from time to time, and there’s absolutely no shame in starting over if the interest suddenly evaporates.

Again, set a concrete goal (I’m going to finish this piece in three months,etc.) for taking action. Decide that you’re going to do everything that needs to be done to achieve this goal by your deadline. If it doesn’t happen, then you’ll know it’s time to move on and try something else.

A New View

Sometimes what we need is a new perspective. Determination is important for seeing a project through to the end, especially if it’s a personal project like a side business that no one is paying you to complete (and which may not yield financial results for years). If you are burnt out on a project, but are absolutely sure you want to do it, it’s probably time to draw back from it a bit and look at it from a different angle.

Maybe all you need is some choice feedback from a trusted friend or mentor. Or perhaps a day spent brainstorming and gathering more inspiration will inject new life and vigor into your work.

What Do You Think?

Have any tips to share on leaping over those hurdles of excuses and getting your projects finished? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

The post Is It Time to Quit That Failing Creative Idea? appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.

Related posts:

1. Websites That Inspired a Generation


2. Designers & developers, why can we not just get along?


3. Energizing Tips for Helping You Finding Flow

Is It Time to Quit That Failing Creative Idea?

Be: Learn How to Spend Less Time on Each Web Design Project with Pre-Made Layouts

Don’t worry: you no longer have to outsource different parts of your web design projects. You can now transform your client’s project into reality by yourself, without coding, using a multi-purpose WordPress Theme. Focus instead on developing your creative skills. In the end, no matter what you read or others tell you, it’s the front end that counts the most – the design of the website.

Why bother considering it?

Not only does a multi-purpose WP theme save you time and money, but it also gives you the freedom to be creative. Therefore, build a list of productivity habits and put this on the top of your list. Discipline is another thing that you should add on that list. Most if not all successful web designer have a fierce work discipline. Another productivity hack is to construct a set of questions that can be easily applied to any project. Here are some examples:

• What are the tools that I need to complete the project as fast as possible?


• What is the layout that best fits my client’s desired outcome?


• How can I limit coding to the bare minimum?

Case Study: Be Theme

We have chosen Be Theme for our case study. It’s a Multi-purpose WP Theme and Themeforest Top Seller. Be Theme has more than 100 beautiful pre-made layouts that cover every area of activity that you can think of: from sport, plumbing to PR and politics. No matter who your client is, Be has you covered. It’s one of the most versatile WP themes out there.

As it was written above, Be offers a massive amount of pre-made layouts that can be effortlessly adapted to any web design project that you have. Below, we’re going to show you how easy it is to install one and start editing it.

Step 1- After installing Be, click on BeTheme Demo data.

Step 2 – Scroll and select your pre-made layout, then click on “Import Demo Data”.

Step 3- Congratulations, you have now imported a pre-made layout. Go in the Pages screen of your WordPress dashboard and start editing it. You can use Visual Composer or Muffin Builder for the task. You can even use them both at the same time.

To sum up, installing a pre-made layout only required three steps and can be completed in under one minute.

We recommend Be Theme because of the following:

• Be has a visual editor of its own (Muffin Builder) that can help you easily edit and build new pages;


• Be comes with the popular Visual Composer too;


• You can select from 6 different responsive grid layouts – boxed or full width- and 6 header layouts.


• Be is highly recommended for web designers who have little or limited coding knowledge;


• Be’s beautiful pre-made layouts have already done half of the job for you;


• Be also means 6 different grid layouts to save time & money while creating a responsive website.

To sum up, Be theme incorporates the latest design trends, including a balanced mix of functionality and eye-candy UX. It’s easy to use and its pre-made layouts are a gold mine.

Here are some pre-made layouts that you will get with the Be Theme:

As you can see in the examples above, Be provides special layouts for blogs, portfolios and e-commerce websites.

Great front-end editing tools and more than 200 shortcodes

Besides Muffing Builder and Visual Composer, Be Theme comes with other wonderful tools such as Layer Slider. Start turning image galleries, sliders and slideshows into real works of art using Layer Slider. It is a really effective tool with customizable features, which allows you to create outstanding parallax effects. Therefore, impress your clients and make them eager to return to your website later using the latest cutting edge technologies.

For those who have coding knowledge, but limited time, Be Theme offer more than 200 shortcodes from Typography, buttons to cool links and image frames and pop-up. You can find the full list here.

Choose Be Theme

Be makes everything faster and smoother. You have to start somewhere. Discover the benefits of the one-man-show experience and plan your actions in a wise and disciplined manner to get beautiful outcomes. Start using Be Theme today to fulfill your creative expectations and build websites faster and easier. Create a long-lasting relationship with your audience and enjoy working with the latest technologies of web design. Be creative: play and achieve.

Be: Learn How to Spend Less Time on Each Web Design Project with Pre-Made Layouts

Time for a New Adventure

It’s been very quiet on the Smiley Cat blog so far in 2015. The reason? I have been looking for a new job, which has occupied most of my free time in-front of the computer. The good news is that I have accepted a position based in Bangkok, Thailand. How about that for a change of scene from Austin, Texas?

My wife and I (well, mainly my wife) had been thinking about a move abroad for some time (although you could argue that being British I am already living abroad). We decided upon South East Asia and after that it was up to me to find a job that would get us out there.

After several months of trawling LinkedIn and various recruitment sites, I am very excited to be joining Lazada, an online retailer that is fashioned upon the Amazon.com model. In three years, Lazada has expanded it operations to six countries and is growing rapidly.

I will be joining the product team, which is based in Bangkok, helping to drive the development of the ecommerce platform and support the growth of each of the regional businesses.

I will certainly miss my friends and colleagues at Observint Technologies, where I have spent the past five years, and Austin itself, where I have spent the past eight years. But it also feels good to be embarking on something new and to take what I’ve learned and apply it to a large-scale ecommerce operation like Lazada.

And, of course, I’ll be living in Thailand! The last time I was there was when I backpacked through South East Asia 20 years ago. There are still a ton of logistics to work through, such as selling our house and most of our possessions. Luckily for me, my wife is a star at executing on these sorts of things.

The only downside is that I fly out first (in just a few days, gulp), with my family coming out to join me once the house is sold. Fingers crossed that we won’t be apart for too long.

Time for a New Adventure