Aakriti GuptaWeb Development0 Comments
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Marketing just an important part of business success — it is what makes the business. Everything else in the business depends upon marketing. Mark Cuban, the famous “shark” on the reality show Shark Tank (He is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and several media and entertainment companies), stated as clearly as possible: “No sales. No company.” What does good marketing entail?

  1. The company needs to determine the need for a product through consumer research and by observing and quantifying sales patterns of similar goods in the market place.
  2. Make sure to modify the existing products or creating new products to fulfill all the consumer wants and needs.
  3. Finding out and determining how the best way to reach potential customers is and to make them aware of your products and to persuade them to buy them.
  4. Create marketing campaigns based on your findings in the most effective way of reaching customers.
  5. Developing customer relationships via follow-up sales campaigns and loyalty programs and offering special offers or deals to the loyal customers.

Marketing is extremely helpful in the transfer, exchange and movement of goods and services. Goods and services can be and are made available to customers through various intermediaries like wholesalers and retailers etc. It is helpful to both producers and consumers as it helps producers increase their sales and it gives consumers an idea of all the available products.

In today’s world everything is done through a screen. Hence marketing also needs to step up to these changing times. This is where digital marketing comes in from. Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using different digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other possible digital medium. Digital marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games are becoming more common with advancements in technology. In fact, digital marketing is now extending to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring tones.

The most common and versatile method of doing successful digital marketing is by making a website. Thus it is crucial for a company or business to have a website.

The website is the place where people will associate and connect with a business. Online and offline marketing activities will attract customers to the website and hence promote the business. Whether it is to get information about the services and products, to make bookings or buys, or to get contact details the website is the hub of all this information.

You may work an incredible showcasing effort just to be frustrated by sales because your website’s landing page doesn’t convert. A website with a bad web design can fail to meet expectations for various reasons, including site speed, responsiveness or route. The significance of a quality site to the accomplishment of the digital marketing strategy should not be undermined.

What is web design? According to Wikipedia, web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; interface design; authoring, including standardized code and proprietary software; user experience design; and search engine optimization. The term web design is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end or the client side of the design of a website including writing markup. Web design only partly overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have knowledge regarding the usability and if their role involves creating markup then they are also expected to be up to date with web accessibility guidelines. Technologies used to create websites include W3C standards like HTML and CSS, which can be hand-coded or generated by WYSIWYG editing software.

Let us now look at what role a web design plays in the digital marketing sphere:

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is SEO? It is a measurable, repeatable process that is used to send signals or messages to search engines that web pages should appear on Google’s index.

Google uses a complex mathematical formula called an algorithm to give a score to every website and every search people to make using Google to figure out which website should rank best for what people are looking for. One can have an effect on the website search engine ranking by having the highest score in terms of quality of the website, having the highest score in terms of authority of the website, and by having the highest score in terms of the most trusted store for that search that people are looking for. Quality wise what search engines are trying to measure or figure out is what websites should rank and whether they offering something valuable or unique or interesting to Google searchers.

Trust is another factor that plays to getting the website to rank in Google. Google will display those websites which are secure and trustworthy. Websites or stores or companies that consistently have poor reviews, immediately decreases the chances of Google displaying your website in their rankings.

Google will display websites that are popular. Build a social network, get people to link to the website, get people to share and like the products on their social network, get people to comment, leave testimonials, show pictures of themselves wearing the product or using the product, Creating a fan-base and then rallying them to link to the company really boosts the credibility of the website and company. This shows that the website is trustworthy and authoritative and worthy of being displayed on top of the search results.

So if you think about it, SEO is really just a process getting the attention of search engines and showing them that this website is the most authoritative, the most trusted, the most unique and interesting website that they can offer to their customers – the searcher.

This is usually the biggest reason discovered or seen for website redesigns – Their current website simply doesn’t meet the requirements for ranking high in Google anymore, so businesses redesign their website to incorporate all of the elements they deem ranking factors. There exists now a duplicate content elimination craze! So why not save prevent the elimination process and just ensure there is no occurrence of duplicate content in the first place? There are three main instances when this occurs; news pages and blog categories that pull in content from the posts themselves, automatically generated duplicate pages and (most common with ecommerce sites) duplicate product descriptions of similar items with very little difference in specifications. The occurrence of any of these three can have a devastating impact on the rankings. Another thing to consider from the back-end design of a website is the capability to insert the necessary information. It is surprising to see how many websites exist that do not have the functionality to input custom Meta descriptions, Alt tags and the like. These are some of the more simple elements of SEO; therefore must be incorporated in the design.

All of this can be achieved through effective web designing!

  • Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

According to Wikipedia, in internet marketing, conversion optimization, or conversion rate optimization is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that convert into customers, or more generally, take any desired action on a webpage. Conversion rate optimization happens after the visit of the customer makes it to the website. This is different from conversion optimization for SEO or paid ads which focuses on who clicks through to the website from the organic search results, how many clicks the website get, and which keyword is driving traffic.

It is important that a website looks well designed and authoritative in appearance. That said, this doesn’t mean a simplistic design won’t work. A design that is too complex can have negative implications on the load time of the site; but on the other hand, if it is too simple there is the risk of looking untrustworthy. Here balance is needed. When considering the conversion rate of a website one needs to ensure that the web design is simple enough to satisfy user experience but complex enough to satisfy CRO. It can be quite a task but getting it right will bring in huge benefits!

  • User Experience (UK)

The design of a website has a huge impact on the user experience of the visitors. This includes taking care of matters from making the navigation simple and easy to use, to ensure the speed of the website is as fast as possible.

Site speed is now considered to be a ranking factor due to its implications on UX. As the speed of the internet increases, so does users’ expectation of page load time. If the web design incorporates large images and other elements it slows the load time, and thus negatively impacts the UX of the website. There are many ways of increasing this load time such as compressing files and carrying out a full audit. During the design process, many web designers try to over complicate the navigation of their website for the purpose of using flashy designs. But do not forget that the key goal of the website is to satisfy all the users who visit your website. If the website does not satisfy the user, they will not stay, let alone come back.

The visual elements can also have an impact on web design. Provoking the right emotion within the user by displaying the visual elements in a proper way can dramatically increase the user experience of the website. So it is important to make sure the website is designed accordingly. Finally, in connection with the point about site speed, it is quite common for websites to be designed in flash, or with high levels of interactivity in the hope to increase the UX of their website. This will, in fact, have the opposite effect as it will slow down the load speed and can make for a confusing experience if done wrong.

As it can be seen web design and development can have a huge impact on some of the most important elements within a digital marketing strategy. The mentioned elements are just some of the more important factors relating to develop a great and effective digital marketing strategy. Make sure to consider all aspects of the marketing strategy and get your web designing done by a professional. It all starts with a web design. So when by hiring a professional you will be able to incorporate all the important and necessary things in your website. It is an investment and you will see the benefit of doing so in the future.

Aakriti GuptaWeb Developmentfunctional webdesign, productivity, web designing, website redesign0 Comments
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Hello and welcome to this blog on how web redesigning can increase your productivity. Do you have a website? If you do, is the website up-to-date? Does it work on all platforms? These are some questions you should ask regarding your website and also answer! A bad web design can hurt conversions and sales and unless you redesign your website there will be a decline in the same. People will probably avoid visiting your website if its web design is bad! When redesigning, it is crucial to strategize and plan an effective approach. Find out what is not working on your website, what is working and what it is you wish to achieve with your website. The ultimate goal is to take advantage of the existing web traffic.

The main questions you need to ask however are:

  1. Does the website look outdated? If the answer to this is yes, website redesign is definitely required!
  2. Are all the features of my website working? Is my web design free of issues? How is the user experience? These factors are the technical and perceptual aspects of how the customers will view the website.
  3. The website is working fine but is it helping in increasing my conversions and sales? Am I making the most of my web design? What can I add or remove to make it better?

A website is a great and essential part of marketing and sales. It is the foundation upon which a business builds its online presence. Through it every type of communication, piece of content and advertisement is shown and makes the customer come back for more. The content displayed gives the customers a clear idea of what the brand is, what it is about and what kind of products and services are offered. It is also a great medium through which you can connect with your customers directly or indirectly by providing contact details. Thus, it is important to make sure your website is hitting all the targets.

More than Looks: Function Matters!

It is important to note that website redesign is not limited to just the look of the website but also the way it functions. If you already have a website you should know about the importance of certain metrics and how they provide insights regarding the web design. You can use Google Analytics to look at metrics like traffic, bounce rate, usage, ranking, conversion and sales. What are all these metrics and how are they important?

  • The traffic on your website refers to the amount of data sent and received by visitors on the website. It is the number of web users who visit any given website. The more the traffic on your website the more popular your website becomes.
  • Bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who visit a website and then leave without viewing the other pages within the same site. Bounce rate is basically calculated on how much time a visitor spends on the website. The aim is to lessen the bounce rate by making the website more likable.
  • Usage is how long a visitor stays on the website. The aim is to make sure the visitors stay for a long period of time on your website.
  • Rankings are a part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It refers to a website’s position or rank in the search results page. There are various ranking factors that influence whether a website appears higher on the results page based on the relevance of the content to the search term, or the quality of backlinks pointing to the website.
  • Conversions are the new leads of the websites and how many of these leads have been achieved. The sales are the sales generated from the website or the Return of Investment (ROI) sales. Obviously, more is better.

What next?

After knowing the statistics, get to know more about your target audience and user experience. This is a very important part of web designing. Maintaining a good user experience is what makes the visitors want to come back for more. First create the targets you want your metrics to achieve. Identify the problem areas. Formulate solutions. It is essentially what website redesign is about.

Understand that target audiences may start off relatively small, but it will increase with time. As newer products or services are added to the website, it expands the website into new markets. Thus it is essential that the message you are trying to send across to the people who are most able and willing to buy from you gets to them. Try to look at your website through the consumer’s point of view and understand what they see, feel and experience when using the website. Get to know what and how to appeal to those target audience members which in turn will help you make informed decisions as you create a website redesign. 

Elements Working on Current Website

Maybe not everything needs to be changed on your website. Often some aspects of your website work very well. For instance, if the current logo used by the business receives widespread brand recognition, changing it would not be the best idea. Similarly the website’s color palette, font choices, or photographs may not need a major change or any change at all. Based on hard data from Google Analytics and other tools, what needs to be changed or adjusted and what remains in the website can be decided.

After this is done, make a list of all the things you want to add, remove or change. This can range from colour change to adding a new tool for the customers to use. Maybe new navigation links are required or more call to action buttons should be included. Make sure that every new goal or target you aim for has a proper reasoning behind it. Revise the list and prioritize those items which do not directly be associated with the goals. Do not remove them from the list, but rank the items according to most important to least.

After all this is done, implement it!

Suggestions for Effective Web Redesign

There are many things that can be done in the web redesign for a more effective response. They are:

  1. Visual Appeal: Eye-catching visual elements are important! People tend to respond more to images, videos and illustrations more strongly than they do to plain text. Do not go crazy with these elements though. It could give the website a clustered look and lessen the visual appeal. Nowadays minimalistic websites are popular. Looking at the different trends in the web designing world help.

 Try using your own imagery instead of other images available on the Internet. By doing this, it has been found that there is an increase in conversions. The colour scheme of the website is important. In order to make the web redesign pop, using contrasting colours does the trick. By using contrasting colours on the important parts of the website make those parts easier to locate and read. They immediately draw the attention of the visitors to themselves and hence should redesigned as so.

  • Define your business more: Show off your business’s personality. By doing so you make it easier for people to connect to you. Publishing blog articles and social media posts are a great way of making this connection. Using colors, fonts, and imagery that reflect your brand identity go a long way in showing off a website’s personality. The content should be written in such a way such that the audience immediately finds the content and does not confuse it with something else.
  • Content Marketing: Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic towards your website. It is a type of marketing that basically involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not exactly promote the brand but aims to stimulate interest in its products or services. A blog is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to effectively spread content to all audiences. If you write blogs on topics related to the services you provide or on those topics that help solve problems you will attract a lot of search traffic and social shares.
  • Optimisation of SEO: This point is extremely important! From your home page to your blog, your content should be readily and easily found upon being searched for. It helps to use relevant keywords, and adding alternate text to your images. By creating custom meta-descriptions and doing other things makes it easier for Google to crawl into the website and understand the content’s purpose. Publishing high quality content will really boost the search engine ranking. ‘Content’ is king and you need to provide accurate and valuable information on your web redesign. High-quality content involves the creation and updating of web pages that increase time on page (for higher usage rate), lower bounce rate (convince the visitor to go through the website deeply and thoroughly), and provide helpful content for the user.

Including the option of voice search is a popular option to have in today’s day and age. It plays a crucial role in search engine ranking.  According to Google, 72 percent of people who own a voice-activated speaker say that their devices are frequently used in their day to day lives. Optimising the website for voice search is important so that if the customer is using the voice search option, your website shows up immediately.

  • All pages mobile friendly: Since more and more people look for content on their mobile devices than on laptops and desktops, it is hard to ignore these small devices. Make sure your web redesign is made in such a way that it looks good on devices of different screen sizes. The sizes of the images and fonts should not exceed a smartphone’s screen size because then visitors using that device will not get access to your website. According to Google rankings and trends, it gives more importance to mobile friendly websites and puts them higher on the search results page. Among the different web redesigns you can implement (responsive, dynamic, or separate URLs) when it comes to rankings, a responsive website is the recommended format. This format also helps in making your website mobile friendly.

In this competitive world, your business needs to be at the forefront. Creating and updating your website gives your website that extra edge over your competitors. If your business website is not doing that well, go to a competitor’s website and see what they have included in their web design. Try to understand what attracts customers to their websites and see if you can apply those things in your website. At the end of the day increasing your sales and profits is the ultimate goal. Web redesigning is a common thing nowadays and really helps in taking your business to the next level!

Aakriti GuptaWeb Developmentcodelash, creative web design, html, website components, website design, website design best practices, website developement0 Comments
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Hello there! Welcome to this blog where we talk about different ways to get the most out your website through website redesign and take it to the next level. Technology is advancing so quickly that new devices can be considered old fashioned and out dated after merely three or four years. This is true of all devices like phones, tablets, mp3 players, and yes, even websites. Being a business in this day and age requires you to constantly update your content and technology. In the 21st century, it all comes down to what the consumers can see and have easy access to. This means having a good website and typically a presence in social media. Company owners may find this frustrating, but they have to consider or keep in mind why it is important — even essential — to their growth and success. Basically, it makes your customers happy, saves you time and money, and keeps you well-connected and up to date regarding what the people want. As a company, you need to be visible, and this visibility needs to impress. If you already have a website, you must know about the importance of website redesign. You must see big online companies like Pinterest, Amazon, Facebook, Wikepedia etc constantly updating their content and websites to make them more accessible to the consumers and also at the same making the website easier to use.

What is website redesign? Redesign means to modernize, change or improve something that already exists while staying true to the initial guidelines. In the case of making a website it will obviously be designed or redesigned and manufactured with the latest technology available and keeping all the needs of the customer in mind, the company logo, remaining faithful to the graphics of the corporate identity.

There are many steps involved in the website redesign process:

Step 1: Evaluation

Identify what is working and what isn’t. Identify what the strengths and weakness of your current website are and benchmark your current data (both metrics and analytics).

Step 2: Identify your goals

Identify your goals and picture what the end result will be. What is your ultimate goal? Are you just looking for a more professional website or are you hoping to get more leads and sales? Whatever your goals are clarity is an absolute must in order to create a website redesign strategy that meets your expectations.

Step 3: Strategy Creation

The website redesign team will outline a plan for achieving those goals based on your needs. To develop a more professional image then look in depth at competitors’ websites, as well as websites you like outside your industry, to get a better understanding of what your competitors can likely do and how you can make your website better.

Step 4: Assess

Assess and outline whatever major changes you want added or removed from the current website design.

Step 5: Implementation

This is the actual making process where all necessary things are done, from wireframes, mock ups to viewing of sitemaps. Necessary changes can be made along the way.

Step 6: Review and Launch

Final part is testing the website. Run and test the website to ensure that it is functional, error free, that the forms work and most important the website works across all browsers and devices seamlessly. If there are no problems, then launch the website.

When do you know your website needs a redesign? The following will explain:

  • It isn’t Mobile Optimized: This is the most important indication that your website requires an update! If you can’t view your own business website on a mobile device, neither can your customers. With the increasing usability of mobile devices to browse the internet, it has been important for quite some time to update your site to be mobile friendly. According to Blue Corona, consumers spend more than five hours on their mobile devices. In 2018, 52.2% of all worldwide online traffic was generated through mobile phones. 51% of customers say that they use mobile devices to discover new brands and products and 69% of smart phone users also say that they are more likely to buy from companies with mobile sites that easily address their questions or concerns (BrightEdge, 2017). So it is pretty obvious that if your website isn’t available on mobile devices, the customers are going to look elsewhere. Within just a few months, more people will be surfing the web from their smart phones and tablets than from their desktop computers. Don’t waste time on letting things run their own course. If your website isn’t where the consumers are, your website will become invisible and solely for this reason, you most definitely need a website redesign.
  • Invisible to Search Engines: If you go to Google, Bing or any other search engine and search for a product or service you will find a long list of companies that provide those things. The best and most popular websites show up on the first page. Getting on this first page is another major goal your website needs to meet, because let us face it; nobody looks at the second page of a search result. Ask yourself, does your website show up on the first page of search results? If not, your website needs some serious search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is ultimately about providing the user with the easiest, fastest, best experience possible and a search engine wants to provide the user with what they are looking for, and when it can do that, both parties are happy. We know that a happy visitor will become a returning visitor. By investing in SEO you will be providing search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo critical information so they will place your site in the top 5 spots on the returns page. You can find out more about what SEO is here.
  • Change with Advancements in Business and Dated Look: Another reason one might need a website redesign is that it hasn’t kept up with changes in the business. Outdated information can confuse and irritate your customers and cause problems for your staff as well. Thus your content needs to be up to date with clear and important information. If the website is over three to four years old, the website is likely to be lagging behind in design trends. Three or four years is a long time in the website design world and, when your website is just running for the main basic reason, it is tempting and easy to put a website redesign on hold.

Over the years, the creative world of the web redesign has progressed and the competition to capture the customer’s attention just keeps becoming more intense. From different quick tips like hand-made illustrations and page motion animations to dynamic gradients and responsive logos, business websites need to be redesigned to be fresh, memorable and maybe even innovative and inspirational. Web designers often notice that despite what they tell you most clients make their decisions emotionally or personally as opposed to logical decisions so it is important to be visually appealing. An updated and modern design is not just for aesthetic; it is one of the key factors in the customer’s purchasing decision. If this is the website redesign, you website will be more reliable and trustworthy. It will also look more professional and give your business that extra edge over other business websites.

  • No Consumer Value: A potential visitor may visit your website once, but if they do not find anything helpful, useful or valuable to them, they will not return. So in addition to current product and service information, you have to fill your website with customer-focused content (like regularly-updated and informative blogs, exclusive mobile web design content, etc.) that keeps the customers coming back for more. It must be understood that a strategy made many years ago might have been to get as many enquiries as possible through an onsite contact form. Today, though, businesses are trying to build authority through blogging and email subscriptions. The aim of the business website is or should be to help generate leads, enquiries or direct sales — depending on the nature of the services being provided. If your marketing activities are constant but you are seeing a decrease in your online sales or leads, it could be a sign that your website is not connecting with your audience.

Whether it is an out dated content-management system (CMS) or a poorly designed call-to-action area (CTA), a lack of key website features will act as an obstacle in your marketing process. If your strategy today is extremely different from when you started your business, it is only natural that your website is evolving to align with your goals and marketing efforts.

  • Website just isn’t Working: Being forced to wait forever for pages to load only to be presented with broken links, outdated offers, and a layout that isn’t optimized for a modern day browser is major deal breaker. Not only is it frustrating, it makes the customer less likely to view that website as being reliable. The website might not be at this level of broken, but certain areas of the website may be old and in need of an update. For example, maybe the website hasn’t been optimized for the latest browsers, or there is linking to old pages that no longer exist and were never properly redirected. These issues may seem small, but they play a significant role in the overall effectiveness of your website. Neglecting this for too long can have a significant impact on your traffic and marketing efforts.

Dynamic websites are very useful in website redesign. The biggest advantage of having a dynamic website is that they can be easily updated as per the needs of the business. When using dynamic website design, it is far easier to update and manage the website. Instead of needing to create new pages, you can change your pages as things change. This is particularly useful if you’ve hired a website designer because calling a webmaster so they can make changes to your site can cost you a lot of money. Part of running a website today is being able to customize your actions to the needs of your customers. People browse as individuals, and demand to be treated as such. Whether that means using social media buttons or the collection of cookies, dynamic website design allows you to do all of the things mentioned. This gives you a chance to know more about your visitors and give them the best experience possible. In a dynamic website, you have all of your content organized in a database which makes it much easier to manage and edit. For example, if you uploaded a certain number posts on your website on a certain topic, in a dynamic website you can simply search and filter according to topic and delete those posts all at once.

Dynamic have many interactive features that users have come to expect from modern websites. By investing in these websites, you show how serious you are about your business.

Aakriti GuptaWeb Developmentcodelash, modern web design, web design, web developemnt, website design, website design best practices0 Comments
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“Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs” – Frank Chimero
(Author of book ‘The Shape of Design’)

Hello there! Welcome to this blog where we talk about traditional web design, its pros and cons, its alternative and some of the trends that are now popular in the web design world. There are basically two kinds of web design: traditional and mobile web design. A traditional website design is the classic way to tackle website design, whereas mobile websites are, for the most part, accessed on a smartphone or a tablet whilst on the go: walking down the street, shopping, eating out, etc. Browsing conditions are therefore different for mobile users compared to traditional users when surfing the Internet.

Traditional web development refers to the act of taking a web framework such as HTML, ASP.NET or PHP and building a website from the ground up. This includes setting up everything from database connections, to setting up database tables, creating separate files for your Contact Us and Products page, and the list goes on.  A traditional website generally hosts a lot of information and many pages; it is accessed either from home or the workplace.

Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include information about a company and its products and services through text, photos, animations, audio/video, and navigation menus. Each page is coded in HTML and displays the same information to every visitor. Static sites are the most basic type of website and are the easiest to create. A static site can be built by simply creating a few HTML pages and publishing them to a Web server. Since static Web pages contain fixed code, the content of each page does not change unless it is manually changed by the webmaster. This works well for small websites, but it can make large sites with hundreds or thousands of pages difficult to maintain. 

A traditional website is a self-contained project with a well-defined finish line, as opposed to ongoing efforts. A traditional web design is familiar and it is what most people think of when they think of website design or redesign and thus is considered the safe option.These traditional websites can be accessed only via a computer and no other devices. This is what makes it better for smaller businesses starting out with few customers.

There are many disadvantages to traditional website design:

1. Large Cost – Even though it is a single expense, it can be a large one-time payment! This payment is usually up front and a huge amount.

2. Change Not Accounted For – Extra features and unforeseen requirements can create cost increases or timeline alterations. Additionally, if any changes are needed once the site is complete, you’ll pay for those new, unplanned features.Design timelines and project scope can shift if your requirements change mid-design.

3. Traditional Web Design Results Are Not User-Driven – The project will have a lot of input from the agency, the designer, and the client, but little will be based on the actual user, how they interact with the site, or what they want.The usability of the website is compromised.

4. Website Redesign Takes a Long Time – The visitors will be met with the “Under Construction” graphic on the website for a few months. This situation is not ideal for business as a major platform of communication will be down. If your customers cannot access your website, they will feel discontent and frustrated.  A traditional web design will begin going obsolete as soon as it’s launched.

To add to the point for traditional website design, conventional or traditional web design is the right option for some brands. Those companies that have brilliant marketing momentum and an old fashioned website may choose to invest in a traditional web design approach. If they have more than 10,000 monthly visitors and exceptional marketing assets that don’t include excessive paid search, traditional web design might be the right choice for them.

Now what is the alternative option to traditional web design? A newer inbound approach to website design called growth-driven design. This approach helps get rid of or overcome the cons of using a traditional web design. Traditionally, web design was often a long and drawn out process, where every feature was considered, planned for and then rigidly built into a site, with no room for flexibility or changes. However, growth driven design (GDD) has risen to challenge that, taking on board lean and flexible principles to create a new approach to website design.

With growth driven design approach, you design your site in phases using an agile approach and get a launch pad website up in one month. It is from here where you can immediately measure impact of the new design and evaluate user behavior and data over the first month. Then you can work on your design and content monthly based on consumer behavior of your target personas to make your site better and more efficient, making small, gradual changes like landing page optimization, word choice changes, Call to Action (CTA) buttons, premium content placement, etc. Along the way you also build a prioritized wish list of additional items you would like to apply  to your design that take into account new changes to your business or additional requirements. 

One of the primary advantages growth driven designs over more traditional web design is the speed at which the business can get their new website up and running. By focusing on getting a launch pad site completed first, with only the business-critical functions implemented, the business can have a new and different looking website up and collect data much faster than with a traditional, website design.

Another benefit of growth driven design is that it allows you to begin collecting customer data about your new website quicker. The business will be able to analyse how the customers are interacting with the site, where they are converting, and which elements of the basic launch pad site have been working well. Whereas traditional web design would have companies are kept waiting longer before the launch of the site for all the functionality to be added, with growth driven design the company can begin making the website better, and quicker, as well as identify which areas the main focus should be on for improvement in future development sprints.

Growth driven design is mainly built around the idea of making optimisations after the launch pad website is launched. This means one can make refinements their priorities, plan out the direction of the website, and change based on the data collected or changes in priority, rather than being locked into a long-term plan with a more rigid website and web strategy. Rather than having an agreed upon a final point as in traditional web design, growth driven design plans to have development and design resources available to make these different  refinements, based on the data collected from the launch pad website, as well as the business goals. This gives a massive advantage to businesses to grow and improve their websites.

By keeping in mind how customers are interacting with the website, and where the company can make improvements in the web design, companies make their websites easier and more professional looking. Giving customers exactly what they want and need, you make the customers happy and content and encourage them to visit your website more often. This increases traffic on your website. This is always an advantage for acquiring new customers and keeping the old ones and increasing revenue.

As oppose to the traditional web design method of paying for the entire website, something that can be extremely costly, growth driven design focuses on getting a cheaper launch pad website ready first, then undertaking additional work after that. This approach helps in keeping charge of the budget as the decisions about which areas one would like to focus on are based on the predicted cost effectiveness of any changes made.

In traditional web design, a business would have to have their entire website redesigned on average once every two to three years. In the gap after launch to the release of a new website, changes can be much harder to implement, and leaves the business lacking behind on the latest trends in the industry.

Speaking of trends, let us look at some of the popular styles on trend now. Humans tend to have poor attention spans and impatient. In studies done by Akamai and Gomez.com, 50% of users expect that when they click on a site, it should load in two seconds or less and that they will abandon a site if it takes three or more seconds to load.

It can be seen, a beautiful site is a beautiful site, but if the design is so data-heavy that it takes too long to download, you could be losing loads of revenue due to no one sticking around to even look at your site. Even worse, with the Google Speed Update that went into effect in July 2018, Google has begun prioritizing rankings for sites that load faster than others, and it’s likely that other search engines are soon to follow. This basically means that websites need to be made faster and quick to load in order to make the websites easier to find. Making faster, quicker websites are now a popular trend!

Flat designing is another popular trend! In 2017, designers and developers began creating clean and simple websites for better mobile performance. This really provided a boost to using the internet on mobile devices. Since then, the number of mobile searches has gone ever-upward, and mobile-first design for websites is now a necessity, not just an option. Image-heavy websites load slowly and frustrate mobile users.

Clean, minimalist designs, or flat designs, are characterized by loading quickly and are currently trendy and desirable for two important reasons. First, both mobile users and desktop browsers can experience quick-loading websites. Secondly, they can hold high SEO value. Flat design helps a site fulfill a lot of the speed requirements that search engines are starting to require.

With mobile sites taking priority away from desktop sites, it’s obvious that mobile first design has become a trend. Mobile first web design is about changing the way that websites are designed fundamentally. Traditional web design used to be that a site would only be designed for a desktop or laptop computer and a mobile-friendly or mobile responsive design might be added as well. Mobile first design does just the opposite: it starts with designing the site for the mobile user first before creating a version that will also work for a desktop user.

This push toward mobile first design isn’t just based on ranking factors or SEO. The visual result is something that will first and foremost enhance the user’s experience with the website on the device that they will most likely be searching from. This design trend is meeting the demand that mobile users are requiring and will likely be the trend for a long time to come.

Traditions are not static. Instead, they are constantly evolving with time. New technology brings new thoughts, new ideas and new ways of doing things. These changes should be embraced, especially when they are so beneficial!

Aakriti GuptaWeb Developmentbest practices in web development, codelash, website, website components, website design, website developement0 Comments
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How do you spot a modern spider? He has a website!

Hello there! Welcome to this blog where we talk about the things that your website must have and will take your website to the next level. The secret to taking your website to the next level is to have an effective website design! Having knowledge about what things a website must have and how they can be added via website design is crucial for development.This blog will help you gather the knowledge you need regarding website design.Let us first establish what a website is first:  A website is basically a collection of interrelated web pages, which include text, images, videos and hyperlinks. It has a common domain name and a presence on the web server.

The importance of websites is now growing due to the growing usage of the Internet by consumers. It is important (essential, actually) to have a website for your business as it helps the users gain credibility. More and more customers are shopping and looking for information online and if you are present on the internet, you have an equal chance to increase your sales and develop a sense of trust and credibility among the consumers. It also provides a means through which you can directly connect with the consumers and get feedback. Another advantage is that having a website is less expensive to advertise on than the radio, newspapers, television etc.There are many types of websites you can create!

Imagine if websites like Gmail, Facebook, Wikipedia, Youtube, Amazon, Yahoo, didn’t exist. It’s unimaginable! They are all such important tools used in our day to day lives. Think, why are these websites so popular and important?

Let’s jump right into it: What are things a website must have?

1. A Logical Draft

Obviously, it is more important for a website to be useful. Before you even pick a server or type an HTML tag, you should first plan out how you would like the website to work, what kind of content will be displayed and how it will be displayed.This is important both for consumer experience and for Search Engine Optimization, since Google considers the content and structure of a site when it ranks for search. So, chalk it out and make a design for the site (something called “wire framing” and make sure it makes sense and is intuitive.

2. Navigation

Easy navigation around a website is one of the up-most important things a website show have when it is in its designing stage. There is no point of having a really creative and exciting website, if the consumers are unable to use it and navigate around it to find all of the important information they are searching for. Navigation is best understood as the method in which you explore and move around the website.

Without navigation, websites can appear unstructured and disorganised. Here are some reasons why good navigation is one of the things a website must have:

  • The navigation bar or tools is a clear indication that your website is reliable and filled with knowledge.
  • People have a clear picture of what is on offer and what they can find and expect from the website. The consumers are also encouraged to explore more if they are able to clearly see the navigation bars and links.
  • Navigation tools help in breaking up the website into categories and groups in a logical and understandable group.
  • Good navigation can speed up the viewers’ search.
  • Navigation should be simple to understand, which will generally mean that the consumers will stay longer and will return because it is a pleasure to use.
  • Good navigation works well with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), in that it enables the Search Engine Spiders to properly crawl into sites and index them. It also helps in improving web usability which basically means that if the website is not accessible by a link, the website will not be found by the search engines.
  • Good navigation can place websites highly on search engines.
  • Good navigation will allow visitors to search the website for longer period of time, giving them faith in where they are and what they can receive from your website.

3. Crucial Business Information

This is another important thing a website must have. You need to clearly define your company. A good company description can get the reader’s attention and interest. We all have short attention spans, so keeping the amount of text minimum but just enough to get the message across is important. People should be able to skim through the text available. Try to include all the vital information in a comprehensive way.

Depending on your business, you should have a few things on your website that fall into the realm of “information.” For example, restaurants need a menu and a list of locations (ideally with directions or a map). The retailers need to put product images, and the service industry has businesses that rely heavily on customer service and referrals need to put some testimonials on their websites. A wedding planner could have one of her recent brides write about her experience with the business. A web designer should include screenshots or links to previous work.

Another important thing a website must have is an easy to remember web address. It should be easy for a user to type the web address in the Web browser or email address.

4.Contact Information

Among things a website must have, display of contact information is very important.  Providing easy to find contact details is important as not every customer will click through a series of pages just to get to your contact details. The contact information must be placed in a prominent place such as the top left or top right corner. It is also a good idea to display the contact details on each page of the website so that the customers can get in touch whenever they want to. It is important to note that the consumers should be provided with more than one way to contact you, that is, phone number, email address, chat and contact form. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and try to understand the goal of a potential customer.

5. Security

Security is another thing a website must have. One of the best ways to keep your website secure is switching from a standard HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to HTTPS(HTTP Secured), which adds an additional layer of security and encryption. It works by using a SSLCertificate (SecureSocket Layer) which protects the data and any sensitive information that is passed between server and browser. This ensures that any information your customers and clients provide on your website is secured and protected, which in turn makes it more difficult for a third party or hacker to get their hand son the information.

You need to renew your domain occasionally otherwise this will wreak havoc and leave your website vulnerable to hackers. When you first purchase your domain name you have to decide how long you want to buy it for, and after that period of time has passed, it expires. You have to renew it. You will be presented with the option to automatically renew the domain once it expires, which is highly recommended. Leaving your website open gives other people, including your business competitors the chance to buy your domain.

6.Mobile-Friendly Experience

With the dependence on phones growing day by day, making sure your website is accessible through mobile devices is now one of the important things a website must have.More than 60% of internet users access online content through mobile devices.In April 2015, Google updated its SEO algorithm to include mobile responsiveness. This basically means that if your competitors’ website is mobile friendly and yours is not, their website will show up in Google searches before yours, which is not ideal.

7.Social Media Icons

Social media is a fantastic way for your customers to learn more about your business and stay up to date with what offers are available to them. It is a way for them to connect with the business on different platforms and for the business to put some personality behind the brand. These icons are especially important when you are posting content. The whole point of posting a blog or uploading a portfolio is to get people to see it and by providing them easy means to access that content, you will be able to reach a wide audience with a strong impact.

All of these things mentioned above are what makes popular websites popular. They are all keeping themselves updated with the changing times. Your website must too if you want to be successful.

So, how can you make your website that extra bit better? Through the website design of course! The website design is the face of your business online. As Steve Jobs once said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

If the website design is faulty, the website will look inferior and of poor quality. Website design is a broad term that encompasses a wide variety of tasks, all involved in the formation of webpages. These are essentially two types of web designs you can decide on: static and dynamic web design. Static web design is typically based on HTML code and dynamic website design is built with superior and refined technologies according to the information available in the database. You can learn more about static and dynamic website designs here.

Hiring a professional web designer to build a clean, neat and professional looking website, making sure that all the things a website must have are present, is the correct way to go. The web designer will make sure that the website has all the things a website must have by performing these duties and roles:

  • Designing engaging and responsive landing pages
  • Optimising sites for maximum speed and scalability
  • Conducting website testing
  • Ensuring website function and stability across devices i.e.desktop, mobile, tablet
  • Working with marketing and research teams to incorporate brand elements and relevant market research findings into website
  • Providing internal support and external customer service throughout the build and launch process of the website

Web development services help your company to increase product knowledge, maintain communication between you and potential clients, sell your products or services, generate leads for the business, and increase the popularity of your company and much more. To have a successful website, make sure your website has all of the things mentioned above. Take the necessary time to do some research and find out what is best for you. Remember, you can always outsource this project to web designers. By getting professional help in creating and maintaining your website, you will be able to always stay ahead with the newest trends and technology. This gives you an edge over your competitors!

Aakriti GuptaWeb Developmentcodelash, css, graphic designing, html, java, web development, website design0 Comments
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Well, hello there! Welcome to this blog, where we talk about web designing, its fundamentals and its importance. I see you have gone against the title and have chosen to read this blog. Let me tell you, web designing may be something that’s very technical in nature, but it is also a form of art. Every website is a story and it’s the web design that tells that story either visually or with words.  Developing a good web design requires creativity and a bit of intuition and by reading this blog, you’ve already exhibited the trait of being curious! Curiosity is a great motivator for self learning and self learning plays a huge role in web design. Website design is a domain that requires you to constantly be on your toes by learning about new developments and techniques. Website designing requires great communication skills to get a clear and precise message across.

What is website designing? To put it simply, website designing is the process of creating websites. It includes several different aspects of a website, such as web page layout, content production, and graphic design. It is essential to note that while the terms ‘web design’ and ‘web development’ are often used interchangeably, web design is technically a subset of the broader category of web development.

Fundamentals:

We have been talking about web designing but are you aware of how basic web designing is done? It is important to lay down the fundamentals of web designing:

  • The Technicalities of aWebsite

Websites are created using a markup language called Hypertext MarkupLanguage (HTML). Web designers build web pages using HTML tags that define the content and metadata of each page. The layout and appearance of the elements within a webpage are typically defined using CSS, or cascading style sheets. Therefore, most websites include a combination of HTML and CSS that defines how each page will appear in a browser.

Others use different types of editors. These editors provide a visual interface for designing the webpage layout and the software automatically generates the correspondingHTML and CSS code. Another popular way of web design is with a system likeWordPress. This provides a different website template that can be used as a starting point for a new website. Webmasters can then add content and customize the layout using a web-based interface.

While HTML and CSS are used to design the look and feel of a website, images must be created separately. Therefore, graphic design may overlap with web design, since graphic designers often create images for use on the Web.

To know more about how to actually make a web page, there’s a great wikiHow article available here.

  • Design

Design, obviously, is a key part of web design. It includes the principles of design(balance, contrast, unity etc.) and the design elements (lines, shapes, texture, color etc.). It is essential to base the design around the knowledge on the target audience. The audience must be considered first and then the required elements may be added or removed from the web design.

The audience must understand what the website has been designed for at the first glance. Thus images, symbols, logos etc are more effective and useful in website designing. Use imagery and icons to communicate whenever possible in your web design. There are some universal icons that people are trained to respond to. The magnifying glass (search), the house (home page) and floppy disk (save) are ingrained into your users already.Take advantage of those visual shortcuts while web designing.

Color makes all the difference, especially as our screens get better on our phones and tablets. It is a facet of design that can be a really key part of the story your website design wants to tell. Just use color to support content, not decorate a page and often if you are using a photo, the colors in the web design should be sampled from the photos used so your web design has a nice unified feel. One of the best rules to go with is to use complimentary colors so as to have a balance of both warm and cold colours in the website.

Choose fonts that support the content! There are literally thousands of fonts to choose from. It is up to the web designer to mix and match – but they must remember that it’s best practice to use only up to three fonts at a time—a nice headline font, one for the main body of text, and then one for any sort of call-out the web designer might need.

There are two ways websites are generated:

A static website design stores a unique file for every page of a static website. Each time that webpage is requested, the same content is returned. This content is created once, during the design of the website. It is usually manually authored, although some sites use an automated creation process, whose results are stored long-term as completed pages. 

The benefits of a static website designs are that they are simpler to host, as their server only needed to serve static content, not execute server-side scripts. This required less server administration and had less chance of exposing security holes. They could also serve pages more quickly, on low-cost server hardware. These advantage became less important as cheap web hosting expanded to also offer dynamic features, and virtual servers offered high performance for short intervals at low cost.

Almost all websites have some static content, as supporting assets such as images and style sheets are usually static, even on a website with highly dynamic pages.

Dynamic websites are generated on the fly and use server-side technology to generate web pages. They typically extract their content from one or more back-end databases: some are database queries across a relational database to query a catalogue or to summarise numeric information, others may use a document database to store larger units of content, such as blog posts or wiki articles. The skill set needed to develop dynamic web pages is much broader than for a static page, involving server-side and database coding as well as client-side interface design. Even medium-sized dynamic projects are thus almost always a team effort.

Both of these approaches have now been supplanted for many websites by higher-level application-focused tools such as content management systems.These build on top of general purpose coding platforms and assume that a website exists to offer content according to one of several well recognised models, such as a wiki or a user forum. These tools make the implementation of such a site very easy, and a purely organisational and design-based task, without requiring any coding.

Editing the content itself can be done both in the site itself, and with the use of third-party software.The ability to edit all pages is provided to a specific category of users (for example, administrators, or registered users). In some cases, anonymous users are allowed to edit certain web content, which is less frequent (for example, on forums – adding messages). An example of a site with an anonymous change is Wikipedia.

Importance:

Website Designing is now essential! Its importance is growing with the advancement of technology, especially for businesses and companies that want to take their profits to the next level and reach more people.

In today’s day and age, not having an online presence is unimaginable! Everything is now online and highlighting your online presence is very important. The basic element that makes up an online presence is web design. The website design can either make or break a business. What makes big e-commerce websites like Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Nykaa, and MakeMyTrip so popular?

The answer to this question is great website designing! You see, when it comes to website designing, communication and knowledge of what the target audience is important. The above mentioned e-commerce websites were designed to make the websites:

  1. Easy to find! This is essential when your website has many web pages. It must be noted that when website navigation is developed well in the website design, users can easily explore and understand your website. A simple navigation is the best for both the web design and users.
  2. Deliver an accurate message!  Readers tend to remember a message when it is concise and they can relate to it. Overdoing the visuals in the web design leads to can lead to a visual cluster which makes the website disinteresting.
  3.  By making the website look more welcoming and trustworthy to visitors. The traffic of the website increases, and there is an improvement or boost in promotions of the business.
  4. By organizing and SearchEngine Optimization! As we all know, it is most comfortable to read a book from left to right, up and down. We read web pages in the similar manner. While website designing, the designers use the same reading pattern. It is because of this reason that designers put most of the important information in the upper left area of the web page. It increases the chances of relaying your message to the visitors who can become your customers. Aside from organization, utilizing the visible areas for important website details can also improve the search engine optimization or SEO. This happens when related key words are incorporated in the HTML text. This gives search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing an opportunity to crawl into your website easily, increasing your search engine placement (higher in the search results) and give your website or firm a more overall visibility.

At the most basic level, a business should invest in some level of web design because their businesses are most likely to do the same. If your site looks poorly made by an amateur, and a direct competitor’s site look professionally made and trustworthy, potential customers will choose your competitor. You can go even further than simply bringing your website up to par with the competition, however. Investing in web design is a great way to set yourself apart from your competitors.  Most businesses within an industry have essentially the same resources available to them when building their services. Web design is the one of the only areas where a business can go above and beyond, making the business appear to be the obvious choice through a gorgeously made website.

There are two primary jobs involved in creating a website:the web designer and web developer, who often work closely together on a website. The web designers are responsible for the visual aspect, which includes the layout, coloring and typography of a web page. Further jobs involved in web design include graphic designing (create visuals for the site such as logos, layouts and buttons), SEO writers to recommend the correct words to be incorporated within the website design, internet marketing specialists etc.

The growing popularity of online shopping and virtual communication is confusing or even scary to the some. Web design is a great way to create a user-friendly environment where people come for helpful tips and best practices.

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